What is Phoneme Awareness?
One of the most basic building blocks of speech is the phoneme, and to gain knowledge of the alphabetic principle, a child must be consciously aware that spoken words are comprised of phonemes. Further, that child must be consciously aware of the fact that phonemes can be substituted and rearranged to create different words. What does teaching Phoneme Awareness look like? Phoneme awareness activities do not involve printed text or letter names. Instead, phoneme awareness activities help children to perceive individual phonemes. It is important that the child engage in activities that increase her awareness of all of the phonemes within spoken words, not just the first or last phoneme. Typical phoneme awareness activities involve word games that teach children to identify individual phonemes within words, segment words into phonemes, or to move phonemes around to make new words.
