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Phonemic Awareness Strategies

for Building Literacy Skills
Posted January 26, 2017 | Education

A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in speech.

There are approximately 41 phonemes in the English
language, according to a report from the National
Reading Panel. Other estimates vary between 36 and 44
phonemes, Connie Juel writes in the Handbook of Early
Literacy Research, Volume 2.
Syllables and words are a combination of phonemes. Some
words have only one phoneme, such as a or oh. But most
words blend several phonemes, such as go with two
phonemes, or checkwith three phonemes, or stop with
four phonemes, according to the National Reading Panel.

Phonemic awareness (PA) reflects a deep understanding

of these units of sound. PA and letter knowledge are
the two strongest school-entry predictors of how well
students will learn to read in their first two years of
school. Educators can implement phonemic awareness
strategies to benefit children with reading skills.

What Is Phonemic Awareness?

Phonemic awareness refers to the ability to focus on

and manipulate phonemes in spoken words, according to
the National Reading Panel.

Phonemic awareness represents a high level of

phonological awareness, or understanding different ways
oral language can be divided into smaller components
and manipulated. Phonological awareness may begin with
a child recognizing language sounds in rhyming songs
and progress to recognizing how sentences can be broken
down into individual words.
Finally, the child may be able to approach individual
words. This involves syllables, onset (the initial
consonant or consonant cluster), rime (the vowel and
consonants that follow the onset), and individual
phonemes. The following examples of the term “protect”
provide an illustration.

 Syllable: /pro/ and /tEkt/

 Onset and Rime Within the Syllable: /pr/ and /o/,
and /t/ and /Ekt/, respectively
 Individual Phonemes: /p/, /r/, /o/, /t/, /E/, /k/,
and /t/

“The term phonological awareness refers to a general

appreciation of the sounds of speech as distinct from
their meaning,” the National Research Council says
in Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children.
“When that insight includes an understanding that words
can be divided into a sequence of phonemes, this finer-
grained sensitivity is termed phonemic awareness.”

Assessing phonemic awareness typically involves tasks

such as isolating or segmenting one or more phonemes of
a spoken word, blending or combining a sequence of
separate phonemes into a word, or manipulating the
phonemes within a word, such as by adding or
subtracting. For instance, a teacher may have students
replace the /c/ in “cat” to /p/ to create a new word
(“pat”).

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Effectiveness of Phonemic Awareness

Strategies and Training
The National Reading Panel analyzed 96 cases comparing
treatment groups that received phonemic awareness
education to control groups that received either an
alternative form of instruction or no special
instruction. Three main outcome variables were
examined: phonemic awareness, reading, and spelling.

Training was found to be very effective in teaching

phonemic awareness to students. The effect was strong
immediately after training and remained so long-term.
Phonemic awareness training also improved children’s
ability to read and spell in the short and long term,
and this effect was moderate.

“Findings of the meta-analyses show that PA training

benefits the processes involved in reading real words,
pseudowords, and text reading,” the National Reading
Panel says. “It also benefits spelling skills in
normally progressing readers below 2nd grade and in
beginners at risk for developing reading problems.”

Phonemic Awareness Strategies

Primary Tasks

The National Reading Panel identified common tasks used

to assess or improve children’s phonemic awareness.
These methods include:

 Isolation: This means recognizing individual sounds

in words. For example, the first sound in “paste”
(/p/).
 Identity: This is recognizing the common sound in
different words. For example, the sound that is the
same in “bike,” “boy” and “bell” (/b/).
 Categorization: This is when the child is asked to
find the odd sound in a sequence of three or four
words. For example, “rug” is the word that does not
belong in “bus, bun and rug.”
 Blending: By listening to a sequence of separately
spoken sounds, the child learns to combine them to
form a recognizable word. For example, the word
created with the sounds “/s/ /k/ /u/ /l/” is
“school.”
 Segmentation: Students may tap out or count the
sounds of a word, or pronounce and position a
marker for each sound. For example, counting the
number of phonemes in “ship” (three: /š/ /I/ /p/).
  Deletion: When a phoneme is removed, the child
learns to recognize the word that remains. For
example, the word created when /s/ from “smile” is
eliminated (“mile”).

Activities and Games

Activities and games are a great way to help educators

teach phonemic awareness. The following examples are
from the journal Intervention in School and Clinic, in
an excerpt reprinted by Reading Rockets.

Simple Phonemic Awareness

 Isolated Sound Recognition: Instructors can

associate phonemes with a creature, an action or an
object familiar to the child. For instance,
associating the phoneme /s/ with the hissing sound
of a snake and calling it a “Sammy snake” sound.
Others include the crowing rooster for /r/, a
buzzing bee for /z/ and the “be quiet” sound for
/sh/. These sound personalities create a natural
connection for children.
 Word, Syllable and Phoneme Counting: Instructors
can read sentences to children without the sentence
being visible. The children place a marker from
left to right for each word heard, and the teacher
can confirm the amount of words by showing the
printed sentence and pointing to each word as it is
read. Clapping hands, tapping the desk or marching
in place can help children count syllables or
sounds in words.
 Sound-to-Word Matching: Instructors can show
children a picture of a dog, and ask children to
identify the correct word out of three options (“Is
there an /mmm/-og, a /d/d/d/-og or an /sss/-og?”).
A variation is to ask if the word has a particular
sound (“Is there a /d/ in dog?”).

Compound Phonemic Awareness

 Word-to-Word Matching: Instructors can use games to

help children practice determining whether two
words begin with the same sound. Dominoes, card
games and even a bingo game using similar sounds
can all be effective. One game is to make a set of
 dominoes with two pictured objects on each side and
have children join cards sharing beginning sounds.
Another is a version of the card game “snap,” where
children take turns drawing a card from a face-down
pile and placing it in a face-up pile. When a card
has the same beginning sound as the top card in the
face-up pile, the first child to say “snap”
collects the pile. Or, children can play sound
bingo using cards with pictures. Children mark when
one of the pictures has the same beginning sound as
the word said by the caller.
 Sound Deletion: Instructors can show pictures or
point to objects in the room that are compound
words, and demonstrate how each word can be said
with a part missing. For instance, by saying
“seesaw” without the “saw,” or saying “hotdog”
without the “dog.” This can be done in the form of
a “Simon says” game: “Simon says, ‘say bookmark
without the book.’”

Building Skills in Reading

Phonemic awareness strategies help young children build
a foundation for reading and spelling. When students
are ready to read, reading activities for kids can
further develop these abilities and encourage a passion
for reading.

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degrees that help teachers inspire and lead students.
Programs such as the Master of Education in Reading
Education and the Master of Education in Elementary
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