Direct Instruction on Phonemic Awareness
What is phonemic awareness?
Phonemic awareness (also called phoneme awareness) is an advanced subskill of phonological awareness. Both phonological awareness and phonemic awareness are auditory skills that are often called “in the dark” skills, meaning they can be practiced in the dark without the use of any letters. Reading Rockets modules that are a part of Eagle Academy’s professional development plan under the Comprehensive Literacy State Development grant provide thorough definitions of both terms:
Phonological awareness is the ability to recognize and manipulate the spoken parts of sentences and words. Examples include being able to identify words that rhyme, recognizing alliteration, segmenting a sentence into words, identifying the syllables in a word, and blending and segmenting onset-rimes. The most sophisticated — and last to develop — is called phonemic awareness.
Phonemic awareness is the ability to notice, think about, and work with the individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words. This includes blending sounds into words, segmenting words into sounds, and deleting and playing with the sounds in spoken words.
What does research say about phonemic awareness?
Phonemic awareness facilitates stronger word recognition. Even before a student learns to read, we can predict with a high level of accuracy whether that student will be a good reader or a poor reader by the end of third grade and beyond (Good, Simmons, and Kame’enui, 2001; Torgesen, 1998, 2004).
It is estimated that at least 80 percent of all poor readers demonstrate a weakness in phonological or phonemic awareness. Readers with phonological processing weaknesses also tend to be the poorest spellers (Cassar, Treiman, Moats, Pollo, & Kessler, 2005).
The What Works Clearinghouse report, “Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten through Third Grade”, indicates “strong evidence” for teaching phonological and phonemic awareness skills (pgs. 20-21, portions of report excerpted below):
(https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/Docs/PracticeGuide/wwc_foundationalreading_040717.pdf#page=20 )
The National Reading Panel (NRP) report found that teaching students to recognize and manipulate the segments of sound in words and to link those sounds to letters is necessary to prepare them to read words and comprehend text. Knowledge of common sound and spelling patterns will help students read about 70 percent of regular monosyllabic words, such as fish, sun, and eat.
How should phonemic awareness be taught?
The progression of skills from most basic to most difficult is as follows:
- Isolation
- Identification
- Categorization
- Blending
- Segmenting
- Manipulation
Each skill is outlined below, with sample activities to target each skill. A more comprehensive list of sample activities is available via the “phonemic awareness” tab on the literacy portal.
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| Explanation:
Students are asked to isolate the beginning, middle and ending sound in words in a spoken word. The scope of instruction from easiest to most difficult is: ● beginning sound ● last sound ● middle sound
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Sample Activity 1:
Brown Bag Sort: Pick a sound and put a picture representative of that sound on a bag. Ex: Use a picture of pizza for /p/. Students are then given pictures or objects, some of which begin with /p/ and some that do not. Students will place objects that start with /p/ in the bag, while the other objects stay out. |
Sample Activity 2:
Beginning, Middle, Last: Teacher says a word and prompts students to repeat the beginning, middle or ending sound. Ex: A teacher could say “Beginning sound! The word is mash” and students would say /m/. |
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| Explanation:
Students are given a set of words and are asked to identify which sound is the same. The scope of instruction from easiest to most difficult is: ● beginning sound ● last sound ● middle sound |
Sample Activity 1:
What’s the Same?: Teacher says three words and asks what sound is the same. For example, “hat, hand, helmet. What sound is the same? (the first sound, /h/)” or “What sound is the same? men, hen, wet?” (the middle sound /ĕ/). |
Sample Activity 2:
Sound Bag: Students are given a bag of pictures or objects that all have either the first, middle or last sound in common. (ex: pen, bed, desk). Students say each word and decide which sound is the same in all the words. |
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| Explanation:
Students are asked to eliminate a word/picture/item from a group that does not have the same sound as the other words. The scope of instruction from easiest to most difficult is: ● beginning sound ● last sound ● middle sound |
Sample Activity 1:
Odd Man Out: Students are given three objects and the teacher asks, “Which of these is the odd man out?”, explaining that this means which does not belong/does not contain the same sound. Choose words that do not have multiple sounds in common. The set should only share a beginning, middle or last sound. |
Sample Activity 2:
Circle Up: Students form a circle and are each given a picture to share with the group. Students work together to figure out which picture/word does not have the same sound as the others. |
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| Explanation:
Blending is combining two or more sounds to form a word. The more sounds, the more challenging the task. Blending may include: ● Two sound words (like “no” /n-ō/ or “it” /ĭ-t/) ● Three sound words with a consonant – vowel – consonant (CVC) pattern, like “bat” /b-ă-t/ or “shot” /sh-ǒ-t/ ● Four sound words with a CCVC or CVCC pattern, like “stem” /s-t-ĕ-m/ or “risk” /r-ĭ-s-k/ ● Five sound words with a CCVCC pattern, like “blend” /b-l-ĕ-n-d/ or “stomp” /s-t-ǒ-m-p/ |
Sample Activity 1:
What’s My Word?: Teacher orally segments a word without saying the word itself, asking students to blend the sounds together and identify the word. Ex: “I’m going to say a word sound by sound. You listen and see if you can blend the sounds back together to form a word! /f-ĭ-sh/ (fish). This task can be done with real or nonsense words. |
Sample Activity 2:
Stick Together: Students are each given manipulatives (such as unifix cubes, colored tiles, blocks, etc.). The teacher says three sounds aloud and asks students to repeat those sounds separately, placing one manipulative out for each sound. Once each sound is represented with a manipulative, students are asked to connect them together and blend the sounds into a word. |
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| Explanation:
Segmenting can be thought of as the opposite of blending. Rather than combining sounds into words, segmenting involves splitting a word into its individual sounds. The more sounds, the more challenging the task. Segmenting may include: ● Two sound words (like “no” /n-ō/ or “it” /ĭ-t/) ● Three sound words with a consonant – vowel – consonant (CVC) pattern, like “bat” /b-ă-t/ or “shot” /sh-ǒ-t/ ● Four sound words with a CCVC or CVCC pattern, like “stem” /s-t-ĕ-m/ or “risk” /r-ĭ-s-k/, respectively. ● Five sound words with a CCVCC pattern, like “blend” /b-l-ĕ-n-d/ or “stomp” /s-t-ǒ-m-p/ |
Sample Activity 1:
Heads, Knees, Toes: Teacher says a word and students segment the word into its individual phonemes while touching their heads (first sound), knees (second sound) and toes (third sound). For four-sound words, like “mask”, you’d use head, shoulders, knees and toes for /m/-/a/-s/-/k/, respectively. |
Sample Activity 2:
Race Car: Each student is given a toy car. The teacher says a word and students must segment the word into its individual sounds, moving the car forward (from left to right) one bit at a time for each sound. Once all sounds are segmented, students should move the car fast from left to right while blending the whole word back together. |
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| Explanation:
Students are asked to manipulate sounds in a word. There are three basic types:: ● Deletion: removing one or more sounds. Ex: “What is “tad” without the /d/?” (/tă/) ● Substitution: replacing a sound. Ex: “My word is time. What do I get if I replace /t/ with /l/? (lime). ● Addition: Adding a sound. Ex: “My word is sat. What do I get if I add in /p/ after the /s/? (spat)
A reversal is an advanced manipulation task where students swap the first and last sounds in a word. Ex: What do I get if I swap the first and last sounds in the word “dough”? (ode) |
Sample Activity 1:
Sound Change: Students say a word, and then the teacher prompts them to substitute either the beginning, middle or last sound in a word chain. Ex: Say dog. Now change the /d/ to /l/ (log). Great, now say log. Change the /o/ to /e/. (leg). Say leg. Now change the /g/ to /t/ (let).
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Sample Activity 2:
Color Encoding: Students have different color manipulatives such as cubes, construction paper squares, magnet tiles, etc. The teacher says a word and students build it with manipulatives, one sound at a time, using a different color for each sound. The teacher then prompts students to substitute the beginning, middle or last sound. Students do so by swapping out one color block for another. Ex: “Show me fad. Now change /f/ to /t/.” Students would swap the first color, representing /f/, for another color to represent /t/. |