The Importance of Phonemic Awareness Instruction on Early Reading Development

What is Phonemic Awareness?

Phonemic awareness refers to one’s ability to hear and manipulate individual sounds. It is a skill that allows children to learn how spoken language works, and is one of the first steps toward learning how to read. Phonemic awareness activities allow children to understand that words are made up of smaller parts called phonemes (the individual sounds in words) and that these sounds can be manipulated or changed to create new words. 

Why is Phonemic Awareness Important?

Phonemic awareness is important because it's a precursor to reading and writing. Without a solid understanding of phonemic awareness, students may struggle to understand letter sound correspondence when it comes time to read and write. Additionally, this skill helps children to develop their oral language skills. Phonemic awareness instruction has been shown to improve reading fluency, comprehension, spelling accuracy and writing skills.

Providing Students with Phonemic Awareness Instruction

Phonemic awareness is a critical component of reading that should be explicitly taught to students but it is suggested that this instruction need only comprise less than 10 minutes a day. Creating or using a quick, easy to implement, phonemic awareness program is a great way to help your students learn how sounds in words work and prepare them to understand that these sounds are represented by letters. The components of a successful phonemic awareness program include:

• A variety of activities that allow students to practice identifying and manipulating individual sounds in words

• Opportunities for students to apply what they've learned by blending, deleting, substituting and matching sounds

• Assessment tools that measure whether or not students have mastered each component of phonemic and phonological awareness

If you’re not sure where to begin in the creation of a phonemic awareness program, check out the comprehensive Heggerty program. This is a product we have used with our students in the past and have had great success with. It is quick and filled with interactive routines that keep students engaged.