Phonemic awareness is essential to learning to read. In fact, "phonemic awareness is the best predictor of reading success in children" (Ladev1, 2021). Phonemes are the individual sounds that form words. Students that have phonemic awareness are able to hear, identify, and manipulate the sounds. Phonemic awareness is an essential component of effective reading instruction. In fact, "when children receive explicit instruction in phonemic awareness, including rhyming games and substitution and segmenting tasks with individual phonemes, they are much more successful than their same peers who did not receive similar instruction. (Howcast, 2011) Click here for a list of activities that promote phonemic awareness.