Phonemic Awareness Practice with Letters

🎧 More about phonemes: As seen in the graphic above, many times a phoneme can be represented by multiple graphemes.

The /k/ sound can be represented by different graphemes such as the letters and letter combinations c, k, -ck, and even ch. This is why spelling can be so tricky!

What’s Included in Phonemic Awareness?

There are various subsets within phonemic awareness. Below the skills are listed in order of easiest to most difficult.

• Phoneme Isolation is the ability to identify and manipulate individual sounds within spoken words.
  Teacher: “What sound do you hear at the beginning of the word ‘pit’? Student: /p/.
• Phoneme Blending is the skill of combining individual sounds together to form a complete word.
  Teacher: “What word am I saying? /p/ /i/ /t/” Student: “pit”
• Phoneme Segmenting involves breaking down a word into its individual sounds or phonemes.
  Teacher: “Tell me the sounds you hear in the word “pit?” Student: “/p/ /i/ /t/”
• Phoneme Addition is the process of adding a new sound to an existing word to create a new word.
  Teacher: “If the word is “pit” and I add /s/ to the beginning, what is the new word?” Student: “spit”
• Phoneme Deletion is the act of removing a sound from a word to create a new word.
  Teacher: “If the word is “pit” and I delete the /p/, what is the new word?” Student: “it.”
• Phoneme Substitution is the skill of replacing one sound in a word with another sound to create a new word.
  Teacher: “If the word is “pit” and I switch the /i/ for /a/, what is the new word? Student: “pat.”

More About Phonemic Awareness

Phonemic awareness is a skill that falls under the larger category of phonological awareness.

According to the National Reading Panel (2020), phonemic awareness is the first pillar of literacy, and it is foundational for reading success.

Phonemic awareness is the most important of all phonological awareness skills because without it, kids will struggle with reading and spelling tasks.

🤔 Think about this! If a child struggles with blending tasks, reading words accurately will be VERY difficult.

And if students struggle with segmenting tasks, their spelling will include many errors. Phonemic awareness is an essential foundation for skilled readers!

Phonemic Awareness with Letters

Research has indicated that phonemic awareness is MOST effective if paired with letters.

This is supported by the National Reading Panel (2020) when they stated: “Teaching children to manipulate phonemes with letters exerted a much larger impact on spelling than teaching children without letters” (2-4).

A more recent meta-analysis (2024) affirms that students benefit from a limited number of auditory only drills, with the average being about 10 hours. After that, most students continue to make progress with these skills when connected with letters.

Incorporating letters with phonemic awareness instruction builds students’ knowledge of the alphabetic principle.

Using letters allows students to clearly see the connection between spoken sounds and written letters. Adding letters takes it from auditory only to multisensory (adding visual, and also kinesthetic if students write the letters).

Adding letters builds a meaningful bridge that connects phonemic awareness and phonics.

✨ Remember, students with dyslexia have deficits in the phonological processing part of their brain.

These students will need more focused and intentional practice to build up the connections and strengthen the pathways in their brain.

👉🏼 Learn about dyslexia therapy at Literacy Learn Reading Solutions.