Phonological Awareness

Phonological Awareness is an "awareness" of the sound structure of language.

Rhyming, syllable awareness, and phonemic awareness fall under the umbrella of phonological awareness.

A phoneme is the smallest unit of spoken language, a single sound.

Phonemic Awareness is the "awareness" of the individual phonemes within spoken words.

Identifying phonemes, blending, segmenting phonemes, and manipulating phonemes are part of phonemic awareness.

The phonological system is about sounds.

"Phon" = sound

Tasks of phonological systems can be done in the dark; they are not related to the alphabet, yet. When we include a letter when talking about sounds, we are moving into phonics. Phonics is the relationship between letters and sounds.

Explicit phonological awareness instruction forms a strong foundation for later phonics and spelling learning.

The following are tasks of phonemic awareness.

Isolating Sounds:

What is the first sound in cat? (/k/)
What is the last sound in cat? (/t/)
What is the middle sound in cat? (/a/)

Deleting Phonemes:

Say cat. What word do we get when we take away the /k/? (at)
Say frog. Take away the /r/. What is left? (fog)

Blending Phonemes:

Blending onset and rime: s-at + sat

Blending individual phonemes: /s/ /a/ /t/ = sat

Segmenting Phonemes:

Segmenting onset and rime: cat= /k/ /a/ /t/
Segmenting individual phonemes: cat= /k/ /a/ /t/

Substituting Phonemes:

Say cat. What word do we get when we change the /k/ to /p/? (pat)
Say sled. What word do we get when we change /l/ to /p/? (sped)

Adding Phonemes:

Say at. What word do we get when we add /s/ before at? (sat)
Say sick. What word do we get when we add /l/ after /s/? (slick)

The Development of Phonological Skills - This article by Louisa Moats and Carol Tolman is provided by Reading Rockets.

Phonemic Awareness: What Is It and Why Is It Important? - This information is provided by the National Center on Improving Literacy

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