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IXL Language Art Games to play online.

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IXL Language Arts | Learn language arts online

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Build great readers and writers with thousands of pre-K to 12th grade language arts skills and unlimited questions that adapt to each student's level.

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Phonemic Awareness (The Bundle) | Phonological awareness activities, Phonemic awareness activities, Phonemic awareness kindergarten

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What is Phonemic Awareness and Why Teach it?

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Phonemic Awareness with Play dough!

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Kids will have fun learning about phonemic awareness with this fun, hands on activity Phonemic Awareness with Playdough Balls. This is the perfect learning activity for PreK, Kindergarten, 1st grade, 2nd grade, and 3rd grade kids.

Before a child can learn to read, they need to be aware of the sounds ( phonemes) that make up words.

Use this fun phonemic awareness activity with playdough balls to help your child physically separate the sounds while doing word building.
You will need:
Start with basic CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words.

1. Say the word aloud, count how many sound you hear.

2. Make that many balls with the playdough, place them apart.

3. Find the first letter you hear and press into the first ball of playdough.

4. Find the next letter you hear etc.

5. Now move the balls with letters closer to each other, starting with the first sound you hear: "c", "a", "t"(Segmenting: breaking words into their individual sounds).

6. Now say the whole word: "cat"(blending all the sounds together).

If your child is ready to learn about diagraphs(two letters make one sound like "ng"), do the same but now there are still three sounds(three balls of dough) with four letters.

Ask your child to change the word "ring" to "bring". He/she should be able to hear the "b" sound that needs to be added in front of "ring".

You could also add phoneme manipulation to the activity by asking your child to change the word "cat" to "cot". He/she should be able to hear the difference and then find the letter that needs to change.
Variation

For younger kids that does not know their letters yet: only do it orally. Do still use the playdough balls idea, but without the cards. For example: say the word, count the sounds, make the playdough balls while sounding it out and move the balls together while saying the word.

For older kids: move onto trigraphs, and difficult vowel combinations like "dough" where it will only be two balls for the two sounds(despite the 5 letters): "d" and "ough". Tricky words can also be done in the same manner. For example: "special" can be seen as 5 sounds: "s" "p" "e" "cia" "l".

A lovely, tactile way to bring phonemic awareness into a word building activity!

More fun word building ideas:

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Kids will have fun learning about phonemic awareness with this fun, hands on activity Phonemic Awareness with Playdough Balls. This is the perfect learning activity for PreK, Kindergarten, 1st grade, 2nd grade, and 3rd grade kids. Before a child can learn to read, they need to be aware of the sounds ( phonemes) that make up words.

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Demonstration of teaching Phonemic Awareness

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Phonemic Awareness Lesson | For Teachers: Lesson Ideas, Class Activities | Preschool & Kindergarten

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What teachers should know when teaching Phonemic Awareness

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Hearing the sound in Language and listening to sounds in word patterns

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Party In The Jungle | Fun Phonemic Awareness Song | Jack Hartmann

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Blog filled with activities and projects

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Phonemic Awareness Archives - Make Take & Teach

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Phonemic Awareness! The research is very clear regarding the relationship between phonological/ phonemic awareness skills and later reading achievement. Children need to have an appreciation of how sounds can be put together to create words. It is critically important to ... [Read more...]

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A blog to help understand Phonemic Awareness

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Subscribe to our Blog
To access a fun activity, word list, & phonological awareness survey, don't miss our Teacher Tips, Fun Facts, Check It Out!, and Word of the Week at the end of the blog!

What is Phonemic Awareness?

What Is Phonemic Awareness? Phonemic Awareness is the awareness of and ability to manipulate the individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words (Kilpatrick, 2015). Phonemic awareness is a subset of the broader category of phonological awareness, which is one's conscious awareness of and ability to "play with" the sound structures in oral language (Paulson & Moats, 2010).

Six Layers of Phonemic Awareness: Improve Students' Reading Using Their Ears

Reading With Your Ears? What if we told you that you could improve your students' ability to read unfamiliar words without showing them a single printed letter? As crazy as it sounds, it's true! This is because one of the major skills underlying the successful decoding of printed words, phonemic awareness, is a purely auditory and oral skill. It may not be "reading with your ears" in the literal sense, but the sounds we hear and play within words are what allow us to ultimately pull the print off the page with our eyes when we decode.

What Is the Difference Between Phonological Awareness & Phonemic Awareness?

Let's start with phonological awareness. Your phonological awareness is what enables you to hear the sentence "My dog ran away" and immediately determine that it contains four spoken words. It allows you to quickly identify that bat and mat rhyme, while bat and boat do not. And it enables you to determine that the spoken syllables /pic/ and /nic/ together make the word picnic and that the spoken word parts /spl/ and /ash/ put together make the word splash. Identifying and manipulating speech at the word, syllable, and onset-rime level are the marks of phonological awareness.

Your phonemic awareness, on the other hand, is what enables you to hear and manipulate the smallest units of speech, called phonemes. Your phonemic awareness gets the credit when you identify that the word map has three sounds, /m/ /ă/ /p/, while the word split has five, /s/ /p/ /l/ /ĭ/ /t/. Your phonemic awareness allows you to hear the individual sounds /f/ /r/ /ŏ/ /g/ and know right away that this is the word frog. And it is what tells you that stop without the /s/ is top, that adding /s/ to the beginning of mash gives you smash, and that changing the /ĭ/ in quick to /ă/ gives you quack.

These phonemic exercises are not only fun, but they are also essential to proficient word recognition and decoding. Seidenberg (2017) tells us that, "we read with our eyes but the starting point for reading is speech." In fact, researchers have found that "among poor readers, 70-80% have trouble with accurate and fluent word recognition that originates with weaknesses in phonological processing" (Fletcher, Lyon, & Fuchs, 2007). We know that "when children lack awareness of the role that sounds play in words, [they] rarely learn to read easily" (Henry, 2010, p. 76). Strong phonemic awareness skills lead to strong readers because phonemic awareness lays the underlying framework for reading (decoding) and writing (encoding) (Trehearne, 2003). Although playing with words at the larger levels of syllable and onset-rime is fun and helps to develop an ear for the sound structures in words, we want to get students as quickly as possible "to where it really matters, the individual phoneme level" (Tolman, 2018).

What is the Importance of Phonemic Awareness in Decoding?

Kilpatrick (2015) tells us that phonemic awareness is an essential part of the process of storing words in one's sight word vocabulary; that is, the body of words (high-frequency or not) that an individual can decode quickly and effortlessly. "Phonemic awareness is what allows us to anchor the sounds in a word to the written sequence of letters that represent those sounds" (Kilpatrick, 2015). This process is called orthographic mapping. Studies have shown that students with better phonological awareness skills can handle this mapping process more proficiently than those with weaker phonological awareness skills (Kilpatrick, 2015). The goal of decoding is to build words into our sight word memory, and phonemic awareness allows this to happen!

Why Are the Six Layers of Phonemic Awareness Essential to Learning to Read?

Adams (1994) emphasizes that while phonemic awareness is essential for learning to read, it is not easily established, and children need explicit instruction to gain the necessary skills. This makes it extremely important for teachers to understand that there are various layers of phonemic awareness and that each of these layers represents a skill that can be developed through targeted instruction and practice. These layers build from the simplest phonemic awareness skills at the bottom of the pyramid to the most complex at the top. These are skills that can be modeled, practiced, and established through oral wordplay.

The Six Layers of Phonemic Awareness: Definitions & Examples of Instruction at Each Layer

Phoneme Isolation: Hearing and isolating the individual phonemes (sounds) in spoken words represents the first layer of skilled phonemic awareness. Isolating phonemes entails knowing that a word is made up of a sequence of sounds and that the individual sounds in words can be differentiated from one another. Beginning sound isolation activities are a great way to help students develop their phoneme isolation skills. Beginning sound isolation is simply pulling the first sound off of a spoken word. Students can isolate the first sounds in words, as in /b/, bear, or /s/, soap.

Blending: Moving up the pyramid, we come to a slightly more complex phonemic awareness skill, phoneme blending. Phoneme blending, which is basically combining sounds, involves listening to and pulling together isolated phonemes to create words. This process requires a student to hold the individual elements in his/her mind as the word is created, thus challenging a student's active working memory. When beginning readers sound out a word, they use letter-sound knowledge to say each sound in a word (/b/ /ă/ /t/), and then blend the sounds quickly together to read the word (bat).

Segmenting: The third layer in the pyramid is phoneme segmentation. This is the ability to divide a spoken word into its component sounds (phonemes). In a segmentation activity, students are given a word like mad, and then they segment it, or "stretch" the phonemes, /m/ /ă/ /d/. As they are saying the sounds, they can extend a single finger for every phoneme that they hear, starting with the thumb: /m/ (extend thumb), /ă/ (extend index finger), /d/ (extend middle finger). Lastly, they blend the phonemes together as they bring their hands back to their chests and say the word, mad.

Manipulation: Truly refined phonemic awareness includes even more advanced skills, like phoneme addition, deletion, and substitution, all three of which are considered phoneme manipulation. These are the top three layers of the pyramid. Phoneme manipulation is generally more challenging than segmenting and blending phonemes. Manipulation requires students to hold phonemes in their working memories long enough to isolate specific phonemes, add, delete, or substitute (delete and then add) specific phonemes, and then blend the phonemes back together to form a new word. These types of activities are an excellent way to build refined phonemic awareness, particularly for students who may have already mastered phoneme segmentation and blending.

Phoneme Addition: Phoneme addition involves adding phonemes to a given word to produce a new word. For instance, starting with the word we and adding the phoneme /k/ to the end turns it into week. Phoneme addition can be done with more complex words as well; starting with the word bell and adding the phoneme /t/ at the end turns it into belt.

Phoneme Deletion: Conversely, starting with the word guide and deleting the final phoneme, /d/, creates the new word, guy. A more complex example of phoneme deletion might include removing one phoneme from a two-sound blend. Starting with the word blast and deleting the initial phoneme, /b/, results in the new word, last.

Phoneme Substitution: Phoneme substitution, the most advanced of all the manipulation skills on our pyramid, requires that a student knows how to both delete and add phonemes. In a phoneme substitution exercise, a student might be asked to drop the short i sound in kit and replace it with the long i sound. When they do, kit becomes kite. This is done through a few intricate steps that are performed automatically and without conscious thought for strong, fluent readers. These steps include recognizing the component parts of the known word (segmenting the word into its phonemes), isolating a specific phoneme, deleting that phoneme, adding the new phoneme, and blending the phonemes together to say the new word. Did you notice that these steps include every one of the lower five layers of the pyramid? That's right -phoneme substitution, our top layer, encompasses every single layer of the phonemic awareness pyramid. If even one of these lower skills is weak, students will struggle to substitute phonemes.

The Importance of Phoneme Substitution

Teachers are often comfortable with and therefore put the instructional focus on the phonemic awareness skills toward the bottom of the pyramid, particularly phoneme blending and phoneme segmentation. Although these skills are undoubtedly important in helping students as they are learning to decode, it is actually the top of the pyramid, with the more complex phonemic skills, that is often left out of classroom instruction, where we need to pay the most attention, particularly as students move beyond the primary classroom. Kilpatrick (2015) tells us that research suggests that "phonological manipulation tasks are the best measures of the phonological awareness, skills needed for reading because they are the best predictors of word-level reading proficiency" (page 155) because phoneme manipulation (adding, deleting, and substituting) is actually the layer of phonemic awareness that is the most closely related to reading connected text (Kilpatrick, 2015).

Phoneme substitution is the critical breakthrough skill a child needs to teach themselves how to read new words. As illustrated in the images above, if a student encounters a new unfamiliar word, like moth, they can use their knowledge of a word that they already know (like math) to teach themselves how to read this novel word. Remember that manipulation activities require students to hold phonemes in their working memory long enough to isolate specific phonemes, add, delete, or change specific phonemes, and then blend the phonemes back together to form a new word. Kilpatrick (2015) states that "training in phonemic manipulation has substantial long-term impact on reading."

Fun Strategies to Use
Sneak some advanced phoneme manipulation practice into the school day!

"Reading problems can be prevented if all students are trained in letter-sound skills and phonological awareness, starting in kindergarten."

- Kilpatrick (2016)

When I first learned about phoneme manipulation, I thought there is no way that my kindergarten students will be able to do that this year. I was AMAZED at how quickly my students caught on and they had so much fun doing it. They're more prepared for 1st grade than any other class I've ever promoted, and I have DIBELS data to prove it!

-Jenna K, Teacher, New York

Download our complimentary Teacher Resources
Phonological Awareness Survey.

This survey enables one-on-one assessment of phonological and phonemic awareness skills that are essential underpinnings of accurate and automatic decoding.

Discover Reading at the Word Level

Click here to link to a word chaining activity we call Word Math>> Add word chaining activities to your day and help students practice their advanced phonemic awareness skills. Use deletion, addition and substitution to chain these words:
strap → trap → rap → rash → ash → lash → latch → batch → botch → blotch
This activity can be done as a pure phonemic awareness exercise without showing students any letters. However, in our illustrate that these advanced phoneme manipulation skills can also be used with word chaining activity we letter tiles to help students encode and decode complex single-syllable words with digraphs, 2-sound blends, and 3-sound blends.

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References

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Six Layers of Phonemic Awareness - Really Great Reading Blog

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Subscribe to our Blog To access a fun activity, word list, & phonological awareness survey, don't miss our Teacher Tips, Fun Facts, Check It Out!, and Word of the Week at the end of the blog! What Is Phonemic Awareness? Phonemic Awareness is the awareness of and ability to manipulate the individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words (Kilpatrick, 2015).

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Understanding Phonemic Awareness

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Concepts and Research

Phonemic Awareness (PA) is:

1. the ability to hear and manipulate the sounds in spoken words and the understanding that spoken words and syllables are made up of sequences of speech sounds (Yopp, 1992; see References).

2. essential to learning to read in an alphabetic writing system, because letters represent sounds or phonemes. Without phonemic awareness, phonics makes little sense.

3. fundamental to mapping speech to print. If a child cannot hear that "man" and "moon" begin with the same sound or cannot blend the sounds /rrrrrruuuuuunnnnn/ into the word "run", he or she may have great difficulty connecting sounds with their written symbols or blending sounds to make a word.

4. essential to learning to read in an alphabetic writing system.

5. a strong predictor of children who experience early reading success.

An important distinction:

Phonemic awareness is NOT phonics.

Phonemic awareness is AUDITORY and does not involve words in print.

Phonemic Awareness is important ...

It requires readers to notice how letters represent sounds. It primes readers for print.

It gives readers a way to approach sounding out and reading new words.

It helps readers understand the alphabetic principle (that the letters in words are systematically represented by sounds).

...but difficult:

Although there are 26 letters in the English language, there are approximately 40 phonemes, or sound units, in the English language. (NOTE: the number of phonemes varies across sources.)

Sounds are represented in 250 different spellings (e.g., /f/ as in ph, f, gh, ff).

The sound units (phonemes) are not inherently obvious and must be taught. The sounds that make up words are "coarticulated;" that is, they are not distinctly separate from each other.

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Definitions of key PA terminology:

Phoneme: A phoneme is a speech sound. It is the smallest unit of language and has no inherent meaning.

Phonemic Awareness: The ability to hear and manipulate the sounds in spoken words, and the understanding that spoken words and syllables are made up of sequences of speech sounds (Yopp, 1992; see References). Phonemic awareness involves hearing language at the phoneme level.

Phonics: use of the code (sound-symbol relationships to recognize words.

Phonological Awareness: The ability to hear and manipulate the sound structure of language. This is an encompassing term that involves working with the sounds of language at the word, syllable, and phoneme level.

Continuous Sound: A sound that can be prolonged (stretched out) without distortion (e.g., r, s, a, m).

Onset-Rime: The onset is the part of the word before the vowel; not all words have onsets. The rime is the part of the word including the vowel and what follows it.

Segmentation: The separation of words into phonemes.

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Examples of Phonemes

The word "sun" has three phonemes: /s/ /u/ /n/. The table below shows different linguistic units from largest (sentence) to smallest (phoneme).

The word "shut" also has three phonemes: /sh/ /u/ /t/.

Examples of Phonemic Awareness Skills

Blending: What word am I trying to say? Mmmmm...oooooo...p.

Segmentation (first sound isolation): What is the first sound in mop? /m/

Segmentation (last sound isolation): What is the last sound in mop? /p/

Segmentation (complete): What are all the sounds you hear in mop? /m/ /o/ /p/

What Teachers Should Know

What Teachers Should Be Able to Do

Definition of phonemic awareness (PA).

The relation of phonemic awareness to early reading skills.

The developmental continuum of phonemic awareness skills.

Which phonemic awareness skills are more important and when they should be taught.

Features of phonemes and tasks that influence task difficulty.

Terminology (phoneme, PA, continuous sound, onset-rime, segmentation).

Assess PA and diagnose difficulties.

Produce speech sounds accurately.

Use a developmental continuum to select/design PA instruction.

Select examples according to complexity of skills, phonemes, word types, and learner experience.

Model and deliver PA lessons.

Link PA to reading and spelling.

Evaluate the design of instructional materials.

(modified from Moats, 1999; see References)

What Does the Lack of Phonemic Awareness Look Like?

Children lacking phonemic awareness skills cannot:

group words with similar and dissimilar sounds (mat, mug, sun)

blend and split syllables (f oot)

blend sounds into words (m_a_n)

segment a word as a sequence of sounds (e.g., fish is made up of three phonemes, /f/ , /i/, /sh/)

detect and manipulate sounds within words (change r in run to s).

(Kame'enui, et. al., 1997; see References)
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Phonemic Awareness Research Says:

"The best predictor of reading difficulty in kindergarten or first grade is the inability to segment words and syllables into constituent sound units (phonemic awareness)" (Lyon, 1995; see References).

The ability to hear and manipulate phonemes plays a causal role in the acquisition of beginning reading skills (Smith, Simmons, & Kame'enui, 1998; see References).

There is considerable evidence that the primary difference between good and poor readers lies in the good reader's phonological processing ability.

The effects of training phonological awareness and learning to read are mutually supportive. "Reading and phonemic awareness are mutually reinforcing: Phonemic awareness is necessary for reading, and reading, in turn, improves phonemic awareness still further." (Shaywitz, 2003, see References)

Phonological awareness is teachable and promoted by attention to instructional variables (Smith, Simmons, & Kame'enui, 1998; see References).
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University of Oregon Center on Teaching and Learning

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Phonemic Awareness: Concepts and Research

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Concepts and Research the ability to hear and manipulate the sounds in spoken words and the understanding that spoken words and syllables are made up of sequences of speech sounds (Yopp, 1992; see References). essential to learning to read in an alphabetic writing system, because letters represent sounds or phonemes.

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Resources for Phonemic Awareness

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Developing Sound and Sense

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Phonological/Phonemic Awareness: The Foundation For Literacy | Sight Words: Teach Your Child to Read

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Learn about phonological/phonemic awareness and phonemes and why they are so important for learning to read. More Phonemic awareness is the ability to think about, analyze, and manipulate the sound structure of individual words. This pre-reading skill, also called phonemic awareness, will make phonics that much easier for your child.

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Blog with Phonemic Activities

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Learning to read can be quite an overwhelming task for small children. In fact, if you think about it, it's astounding that children are even capable of learning to read in such a short amount of time. However, before they begin to read print, they must have an adequate foundational understanding of how sounds in words work. That is where phonemic awareness comes into play.

What is phonemic awareness?

In easy-to-understand terms, phonemic awareness is the ability to identify, think about, and manipulate sounds in spoken speech. This is NOT the same as phonics. Phonemic awareness is actually a critical skill that is a precursor to reading letters. That's why phonemic awareness instruction should NEVER involve print. If you find yourself working with letters or printed words, then you have skipped a step and crossed the line into phonics. This is a very important point. Research tells us that it's essential to focus on phonemic awareness in the classroom before reading can begin. We want to ensure that children have a solid understanding of the sounds of speech before we start phonics instruction.

Nowadays, we are facing an added difficulty, though. In today's early-childhood classrooms, teachers are feeling an ever-increasing pressure to get their students reading. It is easy to lose sight of the developmental process and try to skip steps in order to get our kids reading books as soon as possible. There is just one problem: skipping steps is not going to work. Children's progress in reading will be limited if they haven't learned to think about the sounds in words.

As early childhood teachers, we need to remember that we can't skip past phonemic awareness skills. We can't just barge ahead in the hope that all of our students have arrived in our classroom complete with the full-blown skills of thinking about and manipulating sounds in their minds. On the other hand, we also can't afford to spend a lot of time doing phonemic-awareness instruction. I am happy to tell you the good news that we don't have to! Phonemic awareness instruction can and should be done in small pockets of time throughout the school day. In fact, oral language and phonemic awareness can often be taught and reinforced in as little as five to ten minutes per day.

Here are five quick, easy, and fun phonemic awareness activities that are perfect for the beginning of the school year in any early childhood classroom. Yes, you heard me correctly - that word was F-U-N. I know fun has become an undesirable notion in many schools today. But I assure you that these activities will be fun and that your students really will learn about our amazing language! I have also included activities that require little or no preparation - things you can do on the fly! Although these activities don't cover the full range of phonemic awareness skills needed to produce great readers, they are still fantastic activities to begin any school year!

Listening

The ability to listen closely is a key ingredient of phonemic awareness. This is the part of instruction that is skipped most often, because teachers assume that young children know how to listen. They may not! Furthermore, if they don't, they're not ignoring you. It's just that they don't understand what "listen closely" means. They have to be taught.

The Listening Game.

One of the first phonemic-awareness activities I do with my students, even as soon as the first day, is to bring their attention to noises. After lunch, we come back to the classroom and all the children lie quietly on the floor. It's not naptime, but it's a great time to unwind, which is important for young children. As we lie there quietly for five to ten minutes, we listen for sounds. We all stay perfectly still and quiet. We become "sound spotters." We don't use our eyes - we use our ears. There are always sounds and weird noises you can hear in a school building. We may hear the air conditioner, doors closing, teachers talking, stomachs growling. The possibilities are endless! Your part is to talk about the sounds you and the children hear. Use a little teacher enthusiasm and exaggeration to get the kids interested in this activity. The key phrase is, "Who can spot a sound with their ears?"

"Moo-Moo," Where Are You?

I love playing this game with my class. The kids have a ball, too. In fact, they simply think we are playing.

How to play: All the children sit in a circle. One child lies down in the middle of the circle and covers his or her eyes. The teacher chooses another child to go somewhere in the room and pretend to be a cow by making a "moo-moo" sound. The child in the middle of the circle - with eyes still covered - points in the direction of the animal sound. This game is great because it gets children to listen closely for sounds and for where the sounds are coming from. It also prepares their ears to listen more closely to sounds in words. When the child in the middle correctly identifies the sound and direction, he or she gets to go next and make a different animal sound.

Rhyming

Rhyming is such a great phonemic awareness activity! Most children easily grasp the concept of rhyme. Some need a little help, though. Using word-play with rhyming helps children notice that sounds in our language have meaning and follow certain patterns. Again, this is a precursor skill to seeing sound patterns reproduced in print - as a phonemic awareness practice, it is purely auditory.

The absolute best way to introduce rhyming to your students is by reading lots of fun rhyming books, poems, and songs. Act silly and have fun! The more fun you have with the rhymes, the more the kids will notice the rhymes and enjoy the activities. Exaggerate the silliness of the rhyme. The poem "Down By the Bay" and the book "Silly Sally" are perfect examples of how rhyme can be super fun!

In My Box

This game is great to use after your students have at least some understanding of how rhyming works. That means you have already read lots of rhyming books, poems, and songs and played with those rhyming words.

How to play: Get a small box and place some pictures in it with pairs of familiar words that rhyme (like box/socks, cat/hat, or chair/bear). Use enough pictures so that everyone in your class has a turn. Sit in a circle with your students. Start with a child you know is strong in rhyming. Hold the box and choose a picture. If the picture shows a cat, say "In my box, there's a cat". Call on him or her to come up with a rhyming word. The child might say, "In my box, there's a hat" (or some other rhyming word). After he or she answers with a rhyming word, hand him or her the box. Now he or she gets to choose a card and continue the play.

Syllables

Working with and noticing syllables within words is important, because it makes students aware of how words can be split up into smaller parts, according to their sounds. Our ultimate goal is to work on individual phonemes (vowels or consonants), but children must first learn the concept of "parts of words." It's easier for young children to start with larger parts of words and then work their way down to the smaller, discrete individual sounds of phonemes. We are building a bridge from hearing words to hearing phonemes.

Bippity Boppity Bumble Bee

This is such a fun game. You get the kids clapping out names, first. As they get used to the game, you can start using other words with more syllables.

How to play: Sit in a circle with your students. I have a little stuffed bee that the kids love to hold. You could also use a printable bumble bee. The teacher begins the chant and walks around to a child:

Teacher: "Bippity Boppity Bumble Bee, Will You Say Your Name For Me?"

The child responds, "Jennifer."

Teacher: " Let's all say it." And the class says her name out loud, while clapping once for each syllable.

Teacher: "Let's all whisper it." And the class whispers her name, while quiet-clapping the syllables again, once per syllable.

Teacher and class: "Bippity Boppity Bumble Bee, Thank You For Saying Your Name For Me!"

Repeat with another student and his/her name. As students become familiar with the game, you can allow students to take on the "teacher" role.

Old MacDonald

Here is another great game that you can use to give the students practice in listening to syllables and putting them together into words. It follows the pattern of the song, Old MacDonald. By the time I use this activity with my class, we have read and sung Old MacDonald hundreds of times, so the song is well-known to the students.

How to play: The teacher begins by telling the students they are going to learn a new game - it's a different version of Old MacDonald, and it's kind of a silly version. The teacher begins singing, "Old MacDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O. And on that farm he had a /ti/ /ger/, E-I-E-I-O". Of course, the kids think the introduction of the tiger is wildly funny, but notice what they have actually done: Without being told, they have mentally combined the syllables /ti/ and /ger/ to realize what the animal was! It's huge! Then I show the children a picture of a tiger and they feel proud that they figured out the animal - and they think it's too funny! Again it's lots of fun, and they really think we are just playing a game.

The most important thing to keep in mind as an early childhood teacher is that phonemic awareness can be such a fun time! It shouldn't be long drawn-out lessons. All you need is five-to-ten-minute pockets of time each day. Phonemic awareness activities are also great to use during transition times throughout the day. I often use the ten minutes before lunch, and sometimes during group restroom breaks, to practice and reinforce listening and oral language skills. And the payoff is big! If you give phonemic awareness the attention it deserves, your students will be richly rewarded when it's time for them to start reading!

So now you know some of my secrets - the teaching games I use myself! I've had success with them, so I'm sure that if you make them your own, not only will you have fun with them in your classroom, but your students, too, will have an easier time with reading and go further faster!

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5 Quick, Easy, and Fun Phonemic Awareness Activities

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Learning to read can be quite an overwhelming task for small children. In fact, if you think about it, it's astounding that children are even capable of learning to read in such a short amount of time. However, before they begin to read print, they must have an adequate foundational understanding of how sounds in words work.

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This website has great resources such as worksheets and activities for Phonemic Awareness

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