Phonemic Awareness
Identifying the individual sounds in words.
Description
Phonemic Awareness is the ability to hear the individual sounds (phonemes) that make up words. Students should be able to take words apart and put them back together again.
Why is it important??
- Phonemic awareness is not phonics but it is the ability to understand the sounds in spoken words and how those words are made up. When a student has good phonemic awareness, they understand that each letter makes a sound, and that combined letters can also make a unique sound. If a student does not have a good concept of phonemic awareness, then they will not understand phonics.
- Phonemic awareness is a student's ability to hear sounds, it does not have to do with writing on a page.
- There are only 26 letters in the alphabet, but there are 40 sounds that can be made individually or combined
- Many phonemes (sound units) need to be taught
For more information, please click on the links below.
Photo from Sarag's teaching Snippets
References
- University of Oregon Center on Teaching and Learning. (n.d.). Big ideas in beginning reading. Phonemic Awareness: Concepts and Research. Retrieved July 30, 2022, from http://reading.uoregon.edu/big_ideas/pa/pa_what.php