What is phonemic awareness?
Phonemic awareness is the understanding that "spoken words are made up of sounds." Phonemic awareness has many levels and includes the concept of rhyme and the ability to blend and segment words and to manipulate phonemes to form different words
Phonemic awareness is one of the best predictors of success in learning to read.
How can phonemic awareness be developed?
songs nursery rhymes rhyming books tongue twisters
Activities
Activity: Phoneme Blending Bags
Objective: Students will blend phonemes together to guess the object you have hidden in a bag or box.
Materials:
Bag or Box to keep items in Several items of a similar theme (See suggested items list below. The best place to look is the dollar store. You can often get several of an item in a pack to split between classrooms or grades. You can also just use a picture for the item.) Procedure:
Tell students that good readers need to listen carefully to sounds and put them together to make words. Remind students to allow you to say all of the sounds before they say the word. Tell students the theme of the items in the bag. "Inside this bag, I have a /s/, /t/, /i/, /k/." All students reply, "stick". Repeat the sounds again if some students did not say the word. Suggested Items
School Supplies
glue /g/ /l/ /oo/ pen /p/ /e/ /n/ paper /p/ /a/ /p/ /r/ pencil /p/ /e/ /n/ /s/ /l/ red (crayon) /r/ /e/ /d/ blue (crayon) /b/ /l/ /oo/ green (crayon) /g/ /r/ /ee/ /n/ scissors /s/ /i/ /z/ /r/ /s/ Gift Wrapping (Use a gift box for the items)
box /b/ /o/ /ks/ tape /t/ /a/ /p/ bow /b/ /o/ ribbon /r/ /i/ /b/ /n/ pen /p/ /e/ /n/ card /k/ /ar/ /d/ Lunch (You can get a cheap reusable lunch bag at the dollar store. Then save wrappers and containers or use play food for the items.)
milk /m/ /i/ /l/ /k/ juice /j/ /yoo/ /s/ Hershey kiss /k/ /i/ /s/ chips /ch/ /i/ /p/ /s/ crackers /k/ /r/ /a/ /k/ /er/ /s/ Outdoors/Sports (You can get small mini-toys for these items at the dollar store.)
soccer baseball basketball jump rope bubbles Frisbee Sick Day (Put the items in a coffee mug.)
mug tea tissue piece of fabric for blanket book
Activity: Color-A-Rhyme
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