Phonemic Awareness

What Is Phonemic Awareness?

Phonemic awareness is the awareness that sounds are in our language and spoken words are made up of individual sounds. Students who are aware of the sounds in our language eventually learn to associate specific “sounds” with the letters of the alphabet. The ability to identify and manipulate “sounds” and letters can be observed in a variety of word play games and tasks such as:

rhyming,

blending sounds to make certain word,

counting sounds to make a word,

identifying the beginning, middle and final sounds in words,

substituting one sound for another,

deleting sounds from words,

segmenting words into sounds, etc.

These skills, when coordinated with exposure and discussion of age appropriate literature, can facilitate future reading success. According to the New York State Reading Academy (K-3), “Research indicates that a child’s level of phonemic awareness is one of the best predictors of success in reading.”

(www.emsc. nysed.gov/nyc/REA)