Phonological awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate sounds in language. It is an umbrella term that includes: 

• hearing and producing rhymes

• blending, segmenting, and substituting syllables, onset-rimes, and phonemes

Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate individual sounds within words, called phonemes. It is important to reading because it enables readers to say the sounds of the letters and blend them together. It is important to spelling because it allows writers to divide a word into sounds and spell each sound.

Learn more:

• Reading Rockets: information, resources, videos, etc.