For your child to become a confident and successful reader, it’s important to begin with
phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is the awareness of sounds in speech/words. Children
need to recognize and understand that speech/words are made up of individual sounds. A child
who has strong phonemic awareness can segment and blend individual sounds to form words. For
example, a child who hears the word cat, can segment each individual sound as… /c/ /a/ /t/.
Additionally, a child who hears /c/ /a/ /t/ can blend the sounds and say, “Cat.”
As you instruct your child in the area of phonemic awareness, incorporate the following
five to ten minute tasks below. Doing so, you’ll begin to support your child’s achievement in
language arts.
Note: In the following tasks, I have given a quick example for each area. You can create your
own list of words when working with your child.
Phoneme Isolation: Children need to recognize individual phonemes (sounds) in words and isolate
them. For example, “What is the middle sound in lip?” (/i/) “What is the beginning sound in
not?” (/n/)
Phoneme Deletion: Children need to identify what word remains when an individual phoneme (sound)
is removed. For example, “Say plate without /p/.” (late) “Say start without /t/.” (star)
Phoneme Addition: Children need to identify a word when a sound is added. For example, “Say lip
with /s/ at the beginning.” (slip) or, “Say car with /t/ at the end.” (cart)
Phoneme Matching: Children need to recognize the same sound in different words. For example,
“Which two words begin with the same sound- go, loud, gum?”
(go, gum) “Which two words have the same middle sound- but, bet, let?”
(bet, let)
Phoneme Blending: Children need to blend sounds to form a word. For example, “What word is /r/
/e/ /d/?” (red)
Phoneme Segmentation: Children need to segment a word into its individual sounds. For example,
“What sounds do you hear in big?”
(/b/ /i/ /g/)
Note: In addition to reading, children who have strong phonemic awareness will exhibit success
and apply these skills in spelling and writing.