🖋️ Phonemic Awareness Part 2: Conversations with Cheryl
Five Ways Teachers Can Strengthen Phonemic Awareness
During a recent visit with a first-grade teacher, our conversation turned to the challenge of prioritizing instructional time. Mrs. Blakeshop showed me her planning book and described her literacy block:
❝I have a 90-minute block for literacy, but only about 25-30 minutes a day for explicit instruction. My district requires that I spend 10-15 minutes a day on oral-phonemic awareness and another 10 minutes on flash cards for letter-sound correspondences. This leaves me with approximately five minutes daily for practicing reading and spelling words. And often I don’t even have that amount of time! What should I do?❞
This teacher's situation reflects a trend I've observed in literacy instruction, where a significant amount of time is dedicated to oral-only phonemic awareness activities that are not explicitly linked to reading or writing.
While it's clear that Phonemic Awareness (PA) is a fundamental skill for learning to read, it's also understood that it's just one piece of the puzzle for developing proficient readers.
As I plan instruction—or guide others in doing so—I’ve found it helpful to ask (and answer) five key questions about phonemic awareness:
1. What should I teach for phonemic awareness?
You will want to emphasize the essential phonemic awareness skills that directly relate to reading and writing: isolating, blending, segmenting, and manipulating phonemes.
Isolating phonemes: ❝What is the first sound you hear in fin?❞
Blending phonemes: ❝Blend these sounds /f/ /i/ /n/. What word do you hear?❞
Segmenting phonemes: ❝Say the sounds in the word, fin.❞
Manipulating phonemes: S❝ay fin. Now change /f/ to /t/. What is the word? ❞
Many early literacy programs emphasize teaching with larger sound units such as syllables and rhyming. These activities certainly have their place, especially in early years. However, research indicates that phonemic awareness, which focuses on manipulating individual phonemes, is a stronger predictor of future reading success. While rhyming skills, for example, may correlate with reading ability, they are not as predictive of later reading development as phonemic awareness. The ability to work with individual sounds becomes particularly crucial as children begin kindergarten and first grade.
At CRSL, our programs prioritize the development of these essential phonemic awareness skills, ensuring a strong foundation for reading.
2. How much time should I spend on phonemic awareness?
A pivotal study (Erbeli et al., 2024) revealed that the positive impact of phonological awareness instruction is about 10.2 hours. Afterward, the effect seems to level off and then decline. This indicates that once students gain proficiency in PA skills, further instruction may not yield significant additional benefits.
First Steps, CRSL’s Kindergarten program, provides this recommended amount of time in oral phonemic awareness instruction. Our instruction is sequential, systematic, and explicit. We then apply the skills of blending, segmenting, and manipulating phonemes while students are building syllables using letter tiles and reading and spelling words. Streamlined Levels One and Two continues this phonemic awareness application as the students acquire higher-level phonetic knowledge.
3. Do I need a separate program for phonemic awareness?
No, you do not need an additional program. Many literacy programs integrate and connect PA activities with other instruction, such as letter-sound correspondences. You will want to look for a program that connects the reading components. We know, for example, that there is a reciprocal relationship between PA and learning the alphabetic code and between PA vocabulary development. Use these relationships to increase learning.
At CRSL, our early education programs, Jump Start and First Steps begin with students participating in oral PA exercises. As students develop their ability to blend and segment sounds, we bring letter tiles into the lessons. Research consistently supports this approach:
Phonemic awareness instruction that includes letters yields better results compared to using sounds alone.
Linking PA with letters can optimize instruction time and enhance learning outcomes.
4. What common mistakes should I avoid?
One key skill for teachers is to have precise pronunciation of sounds. It is typical for all of us, students and teachers alike, to add the /u/ sound after consonant sounds. For example, a teacher or student might say “puh,” /kuh,/, or /tuh/ rather than /p/, /t/, /d/.
CRSL emphasizes this accurate pronunciation during professional development. When a student says /duh/ rather than /d/, we show a scissors movement in front of our lips as a reminded for students to clip the vowel sound.
5. How do I make phonemic awareness activities fun and engaging?
PA activities can be highly engaging if you use movement, songs, rhymes, word play, objects to manipulate, and interactive games.
CRSL employs all of these techniques to engage students. Students have multiple opportunities to practice in a fun, playful way.
Up next: In Teaching Tips for Oral Language, we’ll learn how to help students with academic learning by making language visual and by incorporating basic concept instruction into Read-Alouds and play. Be sure to look for more downloadable resources.
