Let’s Start Reading: Phonemic Awareness

The most important skill for a child to have before they start reading is phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is the knowledge of the different sounds that make up a word and the ability to separate and manipulate them. For example, the word FISH has 3 phonemes/sounds - F, I, and SH.  

Phonemic awareness includes being able to do the following skills (source): 

• isolation – picking out the beginning, middle, and end sounds in a word  
  • The middle sound in CAT is /a/ 
• blending - putting all the letter sounds together to make the word 
  • Slowly sound out C- A- T and have your child blend the sounds together to make CAT 
• segmenting – knowing the distinct phonemes or sounds in a word 
  • CAT has three sounds /c/ /a/ and /t/ 
• addition – creating new words by adding sounds to words    
  • Adding /s/ to CAT makes CATS 
• deletion – taking away a sound to create a new word  
  • Take the /c/ away from CAT to make AT 
• substitution - changing sounds in a word to make a new word    
  • Change the C in CAT to B to make BAT

Activities for building and teaching phonemic awareness: 

• Play word games  
  • Say you are thinking of a word that ends in a certain sound and have your child guess  
    •  “I’m thinking of a word that ends in –op"  
  • See how many words your child can think of that rhyme with a certain word  
    • What rhymes with frog? 
• Play I Spy but with sounds  
  • Instead of saying I spy a car, sound out the word car very slowly and allow your child to do the work of blending the sounds together 
  • For an easier version, you could start with looking for items that start with certain sounds – I spy something that starts with a /b/  
• Say it and Move it   
  • Using small items like coins, blocks, or even acorns, tell your child a word then have them move the items for each sound into Elkonin boxes (you can print these out online, create one with paper and pen or chalk, or do it online here)
  • For example: sound out the word dog. The child would move one coin and say /d/, then a second coin and say /o/, and a third coin and say /g/ 
  • This activity makes an auditory practice more visual   
• Use databases from KCPL 
  • Tumblebooks  
    • This database has lots of books to use for digital storytimes, but it also includes games. The game “complete the word” is great for phonemic awareness 
  • Teachables   
    • this database has lots of worksheets. Search phonemic awareness and find lots of activities to practice 
• Read books with rhyming, alliteration, and wordplay    

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

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For more early literacy information, check out KCPL’s Early Literacy page and check out other blog posts about literacy 

Happy reading! 

Written by Lisa Clark, Youth Collection Librarian