What is phonemic awareness?
Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, recognize, and identify the individual sounds that make up a spoken word. You can start working on your child’s phonemic awareness before he or she starts reading or even knows the alphabet.
Activity #1: Segmenting Sounds
- Say the word.
- Next, say the individual sounds in the word. Hold up a finger for each sound.
Here is a video demonstrating this strategy: Counting Phonemes in Words
Activity #2: Isolating Sounds
- Say a word. Ex: cat
- Ask questions like, “What sound did I make first,” or “What sound is at the beginning of the word?” You can also ask about middle and ending sounds
Activity #3: Blending Sounds
- Say the 3 sounds in “cat.”
- Ask your child what word you just made. If this is tricky for the child, you can demonstrate how to put the sounds together as a word. I’ve also had good luck asking kids to “sing” the sounds in order to blend them.
Activity #4: Manipulating Sounds
- Say the word cat.
- Ask your child, “If I take away the /c/ sound and trade it for the /b/ sound, what new word would I make?”
Matching Sounds and Letters
The ability to match a sound to the correct letter is crucial for accurate spelling and accurate decoding.You may notice that your child has a harder time matching vowel sounds to the correct letter than they do matching consonant sounds to the correct letter. This is very common. My theory is that consonants are easier because, for most consonants, we say the sound the letter makes when we say the actual name of the letter. Vowels, on the other hand, not only sound very similar to each other but also have multiple sounds and multiple spelling patterns.
Sound boxes and vowel sorts are my two favorite activities for working on matching sounds to letters. If you are unfamiliar with sound boxes you can learn about them here: How to Improve Spelling-Sound Box Strategy for Beginning and Struggling Spellers – The Vowel Coach
Vowel Sorts
Vowel sorts help kids zero in on vowel sounds and make informed choices when spelling. We want kids to think about questions like:
- Which vowel do I hear?
- Is the vowel making its long sound, short sound, bossy R sound, or something else?
- If the vowel is long, do I need to choose a long vowel spelling pattern?
If you need extra resources for working on those tricky vowels, you can check out my vowel sorting packet here: https://thevowelcoach.com/product/vowel-sorting-activities/
Reading vs. Spelling
I like to tell my students that reading is looking at the letters and saying the sounds, but spelling is listening to the sounds and writing down the letters that make those sounds. Reading and spelling are literacy partners, and it is important to spend time working on both.