Phonemic Awareness

How The Family Readers implement phonemic awareness research

What is phonemic awareness?

Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, identify, and move individual sounds (manipulate) - phonemes - in spoken words.

Phonemic awareness is important because it:

  • improves student's word reading and comprehension

  • helps students learn to spell

Phonemic awareness can be developed through a number of activities, including asking students to:

  • identify and categorize sounds

  • blend sounds to form words

  • delete or add sounds to form new words

  • substitute sounds to make new words

Phonemic awareness instruction is most effective when:

  • students are taught to move phonemes by using different alphabet letters to make new words

  • instruction focuses on only one or two alphabetical programs

  • phonemic instruction is taught in Kindergarten or First Grades or with struggling readers

How The Family Readers implement phonemic awareness research

  • The Storybooks are systematic learning activities focusing on accumulative learning. This produces greater gains in reading and spelling, without confusion about which type to apply.

  • The students acquire the skills, with repetition, leaving enough time to learn thoroughly before moving on to a more difficult manipulation.