Phonemic Awareness is the understanding that words are made up of small units called phonemes.

These sounds, phonemes, can be manipulated and blended to make words.

Phonemic awareness is critical for any language that has an alphabetic writing system. Phonemic awareness is an important component of a good literacy program for a few reasons: 1. Teaching phonemic awareness allows for greater

printed word recognition.

2. Teaching phonemic awareness teaches children to identify, understand, and manipulate sounds in spoken words.

3. Teaching phonemic awareness helps teachers recognize if students will have trouble with reading and spelling.

Identify and categorize

sounds

Blend sounds to form words

Delete or add sounds to form new words

Substitute sounds to make new words

Students are taught to manipulate phonemes by using alphabet letters.

Instruction focuses on only one or two rather than several types of phoneme manipulation.

Phonemic instruction is taught in Kindergarten or First Grade.

Rhyming- Skill to recognize and verbally speak words that rhyme.

Segmentation- Skill to divide words into separate sounds.

Isolation- Skill to recognize sounds inside words.

Deletion- Skill to remove sounds from spoken words.

Substitution- Skill to substitute a new phoneme with another to create a new sounds.

Blending- Skill to recognize a word by hearing individual phonemes that make up the word.

Blending ◦ What word am I trying to say? Nnnnn-oooo--t.

Segmentation (first sound isolation): ◦ What is the first sound in not?

Segmentation (last sound isolation): ◦ What is the last sound in not?

Segmentation (complete): What are all the sounds you

hear in not?

Blending vs. Segmenting Blending is the skill to combine wounds to make a word. Segmenting is the ability to separate sounds in a word.

Children's minds are trained to categorize phonemes in their first language, which may conflict with English phonemes. ◦ For example, Spanish-speaking children may

speak, read, and write ch when sh should be used because in Spanish, these two combinations produce the same phoneme.

◦ Teachers can enable phonemic awareness in English for ELLs by understanding the linguistic characteristics of students' native language, including the phonemes that exist and do not exist in the native language.

Scientifically-based research suggests that ELLs respond well to meaningful activities such as language games and word walls, especially when the activities are consistent and focus on particular sounds and letters. ◦ Songs and poems, with their rhythm and repetition, are

easily memorized and can be used to teach phonemic awareness and print concepts to ELLs.

◦ These rhymes exist in every language and teachers can ask students or their parents to share these culturally relevant and teachable rhymes with the class, and build phonemic awareness activities around them.

Phonological Awareness – is a broad concept that not only includes phonemic awareness (see below) but also encompasses awareness of things like words, rhyme, syllables and onset and rime.

Phonemic Awareness – is the ability to hear, say and manipulate sounds in words and is a sub-skill of phonological awareness.

Phonics – involves making the connection between the single sounds (phonemes) and their related letter patterns (graphemes) when reading and writing

Phonemes – single sounds produced by a speaker.

Graphemes – written representation of those single sounds using letter

combinations – includes Vowel Graphemes / Consonant Graphemes.

Consonant Blends – 2 or more single consonants which blend together STILL making 2 OR MORE SOUNDS (not one sound as with above graphemes eg: bl, str, nd, ld)

Regular Alphabet Letters and Sounds – the phonemes and graphemes related to regular alphabet sounds and individual alphabet letters (see charts below).

Advanced Letters and Sounds – the phonemes and graphemes related to more advanced phonics sounds and alphabet letter patterns (see chart below)

Short Vowel Sounds – The vowel sounds as follows: a as in ‘dad’, e as in ‘bed’, i as in ‘sit’, o as in ‘dog’, u as in ‘bug’ – these are regular alphabet letters and sounds.

Long Vowel Sounds – The long vowel sounds are the sounds the vowels make when you say their name.

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"Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Phonological Awareness, Educational Kits, & Small Group Interventions!" Make Take & Teach. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 May 2017.

"Reading Rockets." English Language Learners and the Five Essential Components of Reading Instruction | Reading Rockets. N.p., 01 Jan. 1970. Web. 29 May 2017.

"Six Components of an Effective Literacy Program | DataWORKS." Dataworks Educational Research. N.p., 15 Mar. 2017. Web. 29 May 2017.