Phonological Awareness

Phonological and phonemic awareness is the ability to recognize and work with sounds in spoken language. From the beginning of development, our sound awareness begins with our ability to break apart stings of connected speech into words and phrases. When a baby first learns to talk, they focus on the meanings of words (i.e. "Mama" is that person that looks after me) and only by age 3-5 do they begin to realize that words are made up of smaller units, syllables and sounds ("Mama" starts with the sound /m/ and continues with /a/ /m/ /a/ . Phonological awareness tasks follow a continuum and include: rhyming, breaking words apart into their syllables, blending individual sounds into words, and manipulating sounds in words. Phonological awareness is the foundation for understanding and using language, using correct speech sounds, and learning to read. While some young students easily develop these skills with relative ease during the kindergarten year — especially if the curriculum includes explicit activities — others must be taught these metalinguistic skills directly and systematically. In order to become strong readers, children need to develop the ability to complete phonemic awareness tasks with proficiency.

Phonological Awareness Tasks

Syllables - "How many syllables does the word watermelon have?" Clap out the syllables.
Rhyme - "Which of these two words rhyme: dog, hat, hog?"
Alliteration - "Do giraffe and go start with the same sound?"
Onset-rime Segmentation - Show child a picture of a cat. Child says the onset ("k") and then the rime ("at").
Initial Sound Segmentation - "What's the first sound in the word rat?"
Final Sound Segmentation - "What's the last sound in the word rat?"
Medial Sound Segmentation - "What's the middle sound in the word rat?"
Blending - "What word does this make? P - E - N?"
Segmentation - "What are the sounds in the word slip?" Child says each sound separately (s - l - i - p).
Manipulation - "Say sing but instead of the /s/ sound say it with a /r/." (ring)

Apps to Support Phonological Awareness

Reading Raven - (3.99) Several levels and lots of practice
Sound Beginnings - (Free) practices beginning, middle and end sounds!
Phonological Awareness Lab - sentence, syllable and sound level
ABC Magic Reading - (Free) Blending, segmenting, blending and longer words
Pocket Charts - (Free) Match Ending Sounds
Letterland Apps - Free right now

Activities that Support Phonological Awareness Skills

Nursery Rhymes - Reading nursery rhymes and singing songs to children builds their phonological awareness skills.
Build Words with Blocks - Use legos or blocks to represent each word in a sentence or each syllable or sound in words. See a thorough explanation of this activity HERE.
The Alphabet Game - Choose a category such as food, animals, dog breeds, etc., and go through the alphabet. Each person has to say something in the category as you go through the alphabet. You can also pick one speech sound and try to name all of the things in a particular category that you can think of for that sound (e.g. for animals that begin with /g/ - goat, gecko, goose, etc.)
Word Games - Make games out of any of the phonological tasks in the above section.

Sounds Letters and Words section from Abracadabra
Initial Sound Game: Going on a Trip. Click on the link for an audio file of how to play.
Rhyming Game. Click on the link for an audio file of how to play.
Auditory Blending: The Robot Game. Click on the link for an audio file of how to play.

Websites for Phonological Awareness

Sightwords.com - This site is full of resources for both reading and phonological awareness - including games! It's geared toward parents, so every lesson and activity is explained clearly.
Heggerty Phonemic Awareness (COVID E-Learning Lessons) - The Heggerty program is in many classrooms worldwide.
Florida Center for Reading Research - Center Activities - FREE lessons and materials to work on a wide variety of phonological awareness skills.
Auditory Discrimination (Zaner-Blosser) - Activities for children who need help distinguishing between different sounds in the environment. This would be a precursor to the skills shown in the above graphic.
Phonological Awareness (Zaner-Blosser) - Activities to support early phonological awareness skills: rhyming and syllable segmentation.
Phonemic Awareness (Zaner-Blosser) - Activities for children who are ready to work on distinguishing individual sounds in words.
Literacy Teaching Toolkit - Videos of teachers implementing phonological awareness activities.
The Development of Phonological Awareness Skills (Reading Rockets) - A more in depth look at phonological development with ages of mastery.
Top Ten Resources on Phonological and Phonemic Awareness (Reading Rockets)
Phonological Awareness Instruction for Older Students (Reading Rockets)
Equipped for Reading Success - This chapter is more geared to professionals than parents, but is an excellent resource for phonological awareness.
Sightwords - offers free phonemic awareness lessons and other resources on their website.

More Resources

I have many resources that can't legally be shared on this public site. Contact me if you would like more materials for your child's specific goals, and I will email them directly to you.

Page updated

Report abuse