PHONEMIC AWARENESS

Phonemic Awareness is the ability to recognize and manipulate sounds. These skills begin to develop as students learn the English sounds in the alphabet. They develop further with decoding and learning syllables. 

Note - English learners struggle to recognize, distinguish, and produce unfamiliar sounds in English.

1. Identify individual phonemes - What sound does ___ begin with?

  • "dog" begins with /d/
  • "name" begins with /n/
  • "thing" begins with /th/

2. Combine phonemes to form a word, also called decoding.

  •  /p/ + /e/ + /t/ = "pet"
  • /w/ + /I/ + /t/ = "white"
  • /t/ + /er/ = /n/ = "turn"

3. Segment phonemes or break apart phonemes in a word:

  • "van" = /v/, /a/, /n/ = 3 phonemes
  • "this" = /th/, /i/, /s/ = 3 phonemes
  • "church" = /ch/, /ur/, /ch/ = 3 phonemes
  • "six" = /s/, /i/, /k/, /s/ = 4 phonemes

4. Delete phonemes from words

  • "cup" - /c/ = up
  • "glass" - /g/ = lass
  • "thin" - /th/ = in 

5. Add phonemes to a word. Word families add onset (initial) phonemes to a rime (vowel + consonant/s).

  • /h/ + it = "hit"
  • /d/ + ate = "date"
  • /p/ + ark = "park"