Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate phonemes (sounds) auditorily. This means we are only using spoken words and sounds, not writing them on paper. Students must be able to manipulate the language and sounds before
Phonemic awareness ability is one of the two biggest predictors of reading success. We know for kids to be able to read and spell, they must have phonemic awareness skills. We can start building these skills young, but how and where do we start?
Once students have a good handle on phonological awareness (if you aren’t sure what this is or how to build it check out our previous blog post) we can start building phonemic awareness skills. Phonemic awareness is the ability to identify and manipulate sounds in spoken language.
It’s important to practice these skills daily for about 5-10 minutes starting when students are in Pre-K or Kindergarten and through at least 2nd grade or until it is mastered.
Phonemic awareness skills from least to most challenging: isolation, blending, segmenting, addition/deletion, substitution.
I find it is best to teach about 2 of these skills at a time, from bottom to top (easiest to hardest). These skills take time to develop, we cannot just teach these one time and move on. Within each of these categories there are varying degrees of challenge depending on the number of syllables and types of sounds in a word. For example, segmenting the sounds in the word “tap” vs the word “suspect” are very different. It is best to start with more simple words and move up the ladder, then go back and do it again with more challenging words.
Let’s break down what each of these skills means:
Phoneme Isolation: is the ability to identify specific phonemes (sounds) in words. For example, the first sound in “bed” is /b/, the middle sound is /e/, and the final sound is /d/.
Blending: is the ability to hear the individual sounds in a word and put them together to make the word. For example, if a child hears the sounds are /b/ /a/ /d/ they can recognize it creates the word “bad.”
Segmenting: is the opposite of blending. It is the ability to hear all the sounds in a word and break them apart. So, we want children to be able to hear the word “bad” and break down the sounds into /b/ /a/ /d/.
Phoneme Addition: is the ability to add a sound to a word or word part to create a new word. For example, if you say “rate” and you add the sound /g/ at the beginning it becomes “great.”
Phoneme Deletion: is the ability to delete a sound from a word or word part. For example, if the word is “land” and you delete the /l/ sound it becomes “and.”
Phoneme Substitution: is the ability to substitute one sound with another to create another word. For example, if you have the word “cake” and you change the /c/ sound to a /b/ sound it becomes the word “bake.”
So, how do we begin to build these skills? One of my student’s favorite tools to build phonemic awareness is with the game i-spy! Here are some example questions you can use for each skill while playing i-spy. Remember to model first and then let the child do their own if they are confident. If you want some pre-made i-spy sheets for building phonemic awareness skills you can click here. You can also just play with a picture you find online or with objects in your house!
Phoneme Isolation: Example: “mop” “I spy something that starts with the sound /m/.” “I spy something that ends with the sound /p/.” “I spy something that has the middle sound /o/.”
Phoneme Blending/Segmenting: Example: “bat” “I spy something with the sounds /b/ /a/ /t/.
Phoneme Addition: Example: “bath” “I spy something with the word part /ath/ and put a /b/ first.”
Phoneme Substitution: Example “cake” “I spy a lake, but change the /l/ to /c/.”
For more information on how to build these skills or what to do if your child is struggling with these skills schedule a call with me!