What is a more advanced phonological awareness activity that can be taught later in the school year?

What is Phonological Awareness?

Phonological awareness refers to the awareness or knowledge of the sound structures in language. It focuses on the ability to hear, recognize, identify, distinguish, and manipulate individual phonemes, or sounds, in words. It also includes the understanding of the number of words in a sentence, the number of syllables in a word, and rhyme pairs. Children should be able to recognize words within a sentence and sounds within a word. This oral practice of literacy instruction is evident through the use of movement or response including clapping, stomping, tapping, singing, or reciting nursery rhymes.

The full understanding of the spoken word is a critical part of a primary classroom’s learning process. Some children pick it up instantly while others require more repetitive practice. Phonological awareness is considered the foundation to learn to read, as it is the basis of the alphabetic principal. Phonological awareness provides children with the skills they need to understand phonics, which are letter-sound relationships through print.

Why is Phonological Awareness Important?

Phonological awareness is a strong indicator of a child’s reading ability that will be later developed in elementary school. In fact, students that struggle with phonological awareness in kindergarten are often considered struggling readers in third grade. While phonological awareness is usually considered an early literacy skill, the elements of phonological awareness are used throughout a person’s entire reading journey. Blending, segmenting, and manipulating sounds will help students quickly decode, which means reading the words on a page, and encode, which refers to the spelling of words.

Syllabication is also an effective strategy to help students with decoding and encoding. Onset and rime help students understand the similarities and differences of word families, which are also essential when learning to read and spell. The study of word families in phonics is easier for students to grasp when they have a strong sense of phonological awareness. Alliteration, another important component of phonological awareness, is also an element of figurative language. Students learn this language skill in the upper elementary school level. Reading is a developmental process, and phonological awareness is the first part of the literacy learning experience.

Phonological Awareness Activities

A variety of phonological awareness activities can be implemented into daily literacy instruction to increase reading and writing success for all students. One phonological awareness activity that can be used to address several key skills is the use of sorting pictures. The visual images or picture cards can be sorted by initial sound, final sound, syllables, or rhyme. Students can complete these activities independently, in small groups, or in an oral whole-group lesson led by the teacher. Poetry, nursery rhymes, and traditional songs are a fun way to begin each morning to increase phonological awareness and engagement. After the recitation or singing takes place, teachers can ask students to clap out the number of words in a sentence or the number of syllables (or beats) in a word. Children can also put their thumbs up when hear a rhyme pair.

Activities that encourage children to segment and blend one-syllable words are another way to teach phonological awareness. Patting out beginning, middle, and ending sounds on the arm is beneficial activity for this purpose. A teacher should say a CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) word like mat. The student should respond by making each individual sound of each of the three letters. Say the first sound while patting the shoulder, the middle sound while patting the elbow, and the third sound while patting the wrist.

Sound boxes are an extension of how to practice blending or segmenting words. Students can use pennies, coins, or beans as a manipulative to represent each sound. Playing a game like “I’m thinking of” is an oral clue game for children to guess a word from the clues provided. An example of this would be the following: This word begins with the m sound and ends with the p sound. Any guesses? The middle sound makes the same sound as the first sound of the word octopus. Any new guesses? Yes, the word is mop.

Teachers can also incorporate movement by having students toss beanbags to blend or segment words or jump rope the words. Phonological awareness activities are appropriate for young children, older students, students with special needs, or students that are considered English language learners. When students are provided many opportunities to learn, practice, and implement phonological awareness skills, they are receiving the best knowledge and support to increase their reading and writing skills as they grow as readers.

What Is Phonemic Awareness?

Phonological awareness is an umbrella term that includes four developmental levels: 

  • Word awareness
  • Syllable awareness
  • Onset-rime awareness
  • Phonemic awareness

Phonemic awareness is the understanding that spoken language words can be broken into individual phonemes—the smallest unit of spoken language.

Phonemic awareness is not the same as phonics—phonemic awareness focuses on the individual sounds in spoken language. As students begin to transition to phonics, they learn the relationship between a phoneme (sound) and grapheme (the letter(s) that represent the sound) in written language.

To develop phonological awareness, kindergarten and first grade students must demonstrate understanding of spoken words, syllables, and sounds (phonemes).

What is a more advanced phonological awareness activity that can be taught later in the school year?
​ Read Naturally programs that develop phonemic awareness

Why Phonemic Awareness Is Important

First of all, phonemic awareness performance is a strong predictor of long-term reading and spelling success (Put Reading First, 1998). Students with strong phonological awareness are likely to become good readers, but students with weak phonological skills will likely become poor readers (Blachman, 2000). It is estimated that the vast majority—more than 90 percent—of students with significant reading problems have a core deficit in their ability to process phonological information (Blachman, 1995).

In fact, phonemic awareness performance can predict literacy performance more accurately than variables such as intelligence, vocabulary knowledge, and socioeconomic status (Gillon, 2004). The good news is that phonological awareness is one of the few factors that teachers are able to influence significantly through instruction—unlike intelligence, vocabulary, and socioeconomic status (Lane and Pullen, 2004).

Many students (75%) enter kindergarten with proficient phonemic awareness skills. The 25% of students who have not mastered these skills are from all socio-economic backgrounds and need explicit instruction in phonemic awareness. When instruction is engaging and developmentally appropriate, researchers recommend that all kindergarten students receive phonemic awareness instruction (Adams, 1990).

The following table shows how the specific phonological awareness standards fall into the four developmental levels: word, syllable, onset-rime, and phoneme. The table shows the specific skills (standards) within each level and provides an example for each skill.

  Less Complex
What is a more advanced phonological awareness activity that can be taught later in the school year?
More Complex
Word AwarenessSyllable AwarenessOnset-Rime AwarenessPhoneme Awareness

Less Complex

Sentence Segmentation
Tap one time for every word you hear in the sentence:

I like cookies.

  Rhyme Recognition
Do these two words rhyme:  ham, jam?  (yes)
Isolation
What is the first sound in fan? (/f/)
What is the last sound in fan?  (/n/)
What is the middle sound in fan?  (/a/)

What is a more advanced phonological awareness activity that can be taught later in the school year?

    Rhyme Generation
Tell me a word that rhymes with nut.  (cut)
Identification
Which word has the same first sound as car:  fan, corn, or map?  (corn)
    Categorization
Which word does not belong: mat, sun, cat, fat?  (sun)
Categorization
Which word does not belong?  bus, ball, house?  (house)
Blending
Listen as I say two small words:  rain … bow. 
Put the two words together to make a bigger word.  (rainbow)
Blending
Put these word parts together to make a whole word:  rock•et.  (rocket)
Blending
What word am I saying?  /b/ … /ig/?  (big)
*Blending
What word am I saying
/b/ /ĭ/ /g/?  (big)
Segmentation
Clap the word parts in rainbow.  (rain•bow) 
How many times did you clap?  (two)
Segmentation
Clap the word parts in rocket.  (roc•ket)
Segmentation
Say big in two parts.

(/b/ … /ig/)

*Segmentation
How many sounds in big?  (three) 
Say the sounds in big. 
(/b/ /ĭ/ /g/)
Deletion
Say rainbow. 
Now say rainbow without the bow.   (rain)
Deletion
Say pepper. 
Now say pepper without the /er/.  (pep)
Deletion
Say mat. 
Now say mat without the /m/.  (at)
Deletion
Say spark. 
Now say spark without the /s/.  (park)
      Addition
Say park. 
Now add /s/ to the beginning of park.  (spark)

More Complex

      Substitution
The word is mug. 
Change /m/ to /r/. 
What is the new word?  (rug)

*Integrated instruction in phoneme segmenting and blending provides the greatest benefit to reading acquisition (Snider, 1995).

Instruction should be systematic. Notice the arrow across the top. The levels become more complex as students progress from the word level to syllables, to onset and rime, and then to phonemes. 

Notice the arrow along the left-hand side. Students progress down each level—learning increasingly more complex skills within a level. 

For example, look at the Phoneme Awareness column. Students learn to isolate, identify, and categorize phonemes first. Then students are taught to blend phonemes to make a word before they are taught to segment a word into phonemes—which is typically more difficult. The most challenging phonological awareness skills are at the bottom:  deleting, adding, and substituting phonemes.

Blending phonemes into words and segmenting words into phonemes contribute directly to learning to read and spell well. In fact, these two phonemic awareness skills contribute more to learning to read and spell well than any of the other activities under the phonological awareness umbrella (National Reading Panel, 2000; Snider, 1995). 

So, as we plan phonological awareness instruction, our goal is to systematically move students as quickly as possible toward blending and segmenting at the phoneme level.

Consonant Phonemes

There are two types of consonant phonemes:

TypeDescriptionPhonemes
Continuous sounds* A sound that can be pronounced for several seconds without any distortion. /f/ • /l/ • /m/ • /n/ • /r/ • /s/ • /v/ • /w/ •/y/ • /z/ • /a/ • /e/ • /i/ • /o/ • /u/
Stop sounds A sound that can be pronounced for only an instant. Avoid adding /uh/. /b/ • /d/ • /g/ • /h/ • /j/ • /k/ • /p/ • /t/

*Blending words with continuous sounds is easier than blending words with stop sounds.

The continuous sounds can be pronounced for several seconds without distortion. The stop sounds can be pronounced only for an instant. It is important to avoid adding /uh/ to a stop sound as it is pronounced—which confuses students. As new phonological awareness skills are introduced, using continuous sounds may be easier at first. 

Read Naturally Programs That Develop Phonemic Awareness

Funēmics: A Phonemic Awareness Program for Small Groups

What is a more advanced phonological awareness activity that can be taught later in the school year?
Read Naturally’s Funēmics is a systematic, program for pre-readers or struggling beginning readers that teaches all of the phonological awareness standards. Each lesson builds on skills taught in previous lessons, adding just a few elements at a time. With minimal preparation, teachers or aides present scripted instruction to small groups of students, using an interactive display (with brightly illustrated pages and interactive widgets) viewed on a tablet or whiteboard. Funēmics is entirely pre-grapheme.

Learn more about how Funēmics teaches phonological awareness skills:

  • Learn more about Funēmics
  • Funēmics sampler
  • Research basis for Funēmics

Other Programs That Support Phonemic Awareness

The following programs do not focus on phonemic awareness but include phonemic awareness activities as part of a broader scope of instruction:

Bibliography

Adams, M. J. (1990). Beginning to read: Thinking and learning about print. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 

Blachman, B. A. (2000). Phonological awareness. In M. L. Kamil, P. B. Rosenthal, P. D. Pearson, and R. Barr (eds.), Handbook of reading research, 3, pp. 483-502.  Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Blachman, B. A. (1995). Identifying the core linguistic deficits and the critical conditions for early intervention with children with reading disabilities. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Learning Disabilities Association, Orlando, FL, March 1995.

Gillon, G. T. (2004). Phonological awareness: From research to practice. New York: The Guilford Press.

Lane, H. B., and P. C. Pullen. (2004). A sound beginning: Phonological awareness assessment and instruction. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

National Institute for Literacy. (1998). Put reading first. <http://lincs.ed.gov/publications/pdf/PRFbooklet.pdf>

National Reading Panel. (2000). Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. Washington, DC: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Snider, V. A. (1995). A primer on phonemic awareness: What it is, why it’s important, and how to teach it. School Psychology Review, 24(3), pp. 443-456.

What is the most advanced phonological awareness skill?

Phoneme Substitution: Phoneme substitution, the most advanced of all the manipulation skills on our pyramid, requires that a student knows how to both delete and add phonemes.

What phonological awareness skills are better to teach early in the year?

Sound blending is an important skill for early readers. They need to put sound units — phonemes — together to be able to read a word smoothly. You can help your child start working on this by putting together sounds of different words. Ask your child to connect the beginning sound with the rest of a word.

What is advanced phonological awareness?

Advanced phonemic awareness: These skills are typically developed by about third or fourth grade. Advanced phonemic awareness skills include the ability to manipulate phonemes, such as. Deleting phonemes (“Say 'cat'. Say it again without the /k/”.

What is the best activity to develop phonological awareness?

Fun And Easy Phonemic Awareness Activities.
Guess-That-Word. If you'd like to give this activity a go, lay out a few items or pictures in front of your child. ... .
Mystery Bag. ... .
Clapping It Out. ... .
Make Some Noise! ... .
I-Spy With Words. ... .
Rhyme Matching Game. ... .
Make Your Own Rhyme. ... .
Drawing A Phonetic Alphabet..