Phonological awareness, is a broader, umbrella term, which phonemic awareness falls under. Phonological awareness includes identifying and manipulating larger parts of spoken language (words, syllables, onsets and rimes, and phonemes).  The level of phonological awareness that a child has achieved can be measured with the following:

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​Recognizing Word/ Sentence Length-->Rhyming-->Syllabication-->Onset-Rime Division-->

Phonemic Awareness (Blending, Segmenting, Matching, Deletion) 


Early readers work their way through this skills chart from the left to the right, flowing from easiest to hardest.



• Recognizing Word/ Sentence Length - This means that a child knows the directional movement across print (left-to-right, top-to-bottom), orientation of letters, sequence of letters in a word, and the sequence of words in a sentence

• Rhyming - Forming words that have the same ending sound
• Syllabication -  Breaking whole words into smaller parts, with each part containing one vowel sound
• Onset-Rime Division - Breaking words down into their onset (the initial consonant sound of a syllable [e.g. “c” in “cat”]) and rime (the string of letters that follow the onset, which is usually a vowel and a string of consonants [e.g. "at" in "cat"])

• Phonemic Awareness - The ability to notice, think about, and manipulate individual sounds, or phonemes, in spoken words.



Phonemic Awareness Vocabulary:



• Phoneme - The smallest part of spoken language that makes a difference in the meaning of words. The English language has about 41 phonemes

A few words, such as “a” or “oh”, have only one phoneme
Most words, however, have more than one phoneme
If = 2 phonemes /i/ /f/
Check = 3 phonemes /ch/ /e/ /ck/

Stop = /s/ /t/ /o/ /p/



• Grapheme - The smallest part of written language that represents a phoneme in the spelling of the word

It can be just one letter (b.d.f.p.s)
 Or several (ch, sh, th, -ck, ea, -igh)



• Phonics - The understanding that there is a predictable relationship between phonemes (the sounds in spoken language) and graphemes (the letters and spellings that represent those sounds in written language)



How to Teach- Skills/ Activities for Mastery of Phonemic Awareness:



• Phoneme Isolation - Children recognize individual sounds in a word

           What is the first sound in van? - /v/



• Phoneme Identity - Children recognize the same sounds in different words

           What sounds the same in fix, fall, and fun? - /f/



• Categorizing sounds - Children recognize the word in a set of three or four words 

that has the “odd” sound



           Which word doesn’t belong? Shake, ice, shave



• Blending sounds - Children listen to a sequence of separately spoken phonemes ​

and then combine the phonemes to form a word



           Teacher: what word is /b/ /i/ /g/?

           Children: /b/ /i/ /g/ is big



• Segmenting sounds - Children break a word into its separate sounds, ​

saying each sound as they tap out or count it

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                                                                                  sh         ee       p 

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• Deleting sounds - Children recognize the word that remains when​

a phoneme is removed from another word



           Teacher: What is smile without the /s/?

           Children: Mile



• Adding sounds and substituting sounds - Children make a new word by adding a phoneme, ​

or substitute one phoneme for another to make a new word​



Assessment:



Phonemic awareness assessment can be done both formally and informally.  In the classroom a teacher can assess students informally when determining how well students have mastered the skills used in phonemic awareness listed above.  Formal assessment includes administering the phoneme segmentation and first sound fluency DIBELS section to students.