Phonemic awareness, explained for teachers and parents

Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear and change the single sounds in spoken words. A student with it can tell you that "ship" has three sounds, /sh/ /i/ /p/, and that changing /p/ to /n/ makes "shin". It is spoken work. No letters are needed to practice it, though the strongest results come when sounds are soon tied to letters.

Phonemic awareness sits inside a wider skill, phonological awareness, which also covers rhyme, syllables and the first-sound-plus-rest split called onset and rime. Most students move from larger units to smaller ones, but you do not need to finish one level before starting the next.

The articles here explain the difference between the two terms, the order skills usually develop in, and how to teach blending and segmenting in short daily drills. They also cover deletion and substitution, sound boxes, and how much time this work deserves. The National Reading Panel found that programs focused on one or two skills, with letters, did best, and that more hours did not always help.

Each article includes spoken prompts you can use straight away, with the answer a student should give.