Welcome to the Phonemic Awareness section of Structured Literacy. Phonemic awareness is the first and foundational step in effective reading instruction. It focuses on helping students hear and manipulate individual sounds in spoken words—skills that are essential for successful reading and spelling. This brief, daily practice (just 2–3 minutes) includes engaging oral activities like blending, segmenting, deleting, and substituting sounds, all centered around the focus sound-spelling pattern of the lesson. Here, you'll find guidance, examples, and resources to support strong phonemic awareness routines in your classroom.
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Phonological Awareness (PA) activities focus on the sounds of letters, not their written form.
PA activities are completely auditory, involving only speaking and listening.
PA activities can be done anytime, anywhere, making them easy to integrate into classroom routines and transitions.
These skills should be practiced daily to build strong foundational reading abilities.
Regular practice supports the development of decoding, encoding, and orthographic mapping.
Students who master basic PA skills can be challenged with advanced tasks such as sound deletion, substitution, and reversal.
Here are some recommendations for what to do and what not to do in Phonemic Awareness.
Phonological Awareness activities do not include visual cues.
They do not involve letters or spellings—those are part of phonics, not PA.
PA activities are not boring or rote; they can be engaging and fun.
The HMH Into Reading sound/spelling cards can be displayed and refered to as needed. You can also use them as flashcards when reviewing sounds and spellings.
The mystery sound box is an engaging activity that teachers can adapt to integrate with the program's phonics lessons. It essentially allows students to become "detectives" and guess the mystery sound by analyzing clues presented in the box.
Phonemic awareness sound boxes are a simple yet powerful tool that help students isolate and identify individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words. Each box represents one sound, and students push a token or marker into each box as they say the sounds aloud. This hands-on activity strengthens their ability to segment, blend, and manipulate sounds. Multiple versions are available—choose the one that best fits the needs of your students.
These beginning of the year personal vowel valleys have sound cards that students can add as they are taught.
These beginning of the year personal vowel valleys have sound cards that students can add as they are taught.
Fisher, D., Frey, N., & Hattie, J. (2016). Visible learning for literacy: Implementing the practices that work best to accelerate student learning. Corwin.
Visible Learning for Literacy (Fisher, Frey, & Hattie, 2016) applies John Hattie's research on effective teaching practices to literacy instruction. The book emphasizes using evidence-based strategies that have the greatest impact on student learning, focusing on what works best before, during, and after reading. It highlights the importance of teacher clarity, feedback, and student engagement to accelerate literacy growth.
The Reading League Ohio. (n.d.). Do this, not that: Decoding. Arena Press. https://www.sfdr-cisd.org/media/fxfbhu22/do-this-not-that-reading.pdf
The “Do This, Not That” article by The Reading League Ohio offers side-by-side comparisons of effective vs. outdated literacy practices across areas like decoding, vocabulary, comprehension, fluency, and assessment. It emphasizes explicit, systematic instruction aligned with the Science of Reading—highlighting the importance of phonics-based strategies, complex text exposure, meaningful vocabulary work, oral reading for fluency, and data-driven assessments—while discouraging leveled texts, memorization, and cueing systems.
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