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Phonemic Awareness is the ability to recognize and manipulate sounds at the level of individual phonemes (phonemes are the smallest units of sound in speech). Phonemic awareness is Important because it helps children develop the skills necessary to decode words when reading.

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Activity 1: Rhyming Word Hunt

Description: Have students listen to a word you say and then search for objects or images in the classroom that rhyme with that word (e.g., "cat" could be paired with "hat" and "bat").

Differentiation: For students with exceptionalities, such as those with speech or language delays, provide visual aids with the target word and a list of potential rhyming objects or pictures to choose from. You could also work in smaller groups for more focused attention.

Activity 2: Sound Sorting

Description: Provide students with a set of objects or pictures. Ask them to sort the pictures based on their beginning, middle, or ending sounds.

Differentiation: For students with exceptionalities like autism spectrum disorder, consider using tactile objects (e.g., toy animals or textures) that help them make the sound-to-object connection. Use songs and rhymes to reinforce sound patterns.

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Activity: "I Spy with My Little Eye" (Focus on Initial Sounds)

Description: Encourage parents to play a modified "I Spy" game at home, where they say, "I spy with my little eye something that starts with /b/," and children must guess and say words that start with the letter sound.

Explanation: This activity helps children practice isolating beginning sounds, an important skill in phonemic awareness. It can be easily adapted for children with exceptionalities by using picture cards or letters as visual supports.

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Website: Starfall

Explanation: Starfall offers interactive phonemic awareness activities and songs that help children engage with sounds in a playful and accessible way. The site includes visual cues, audio support, and interactive games that support all learners, especially those with language delays.

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Phonics is the relationship between letters (graphemes) and their sounds (phonemes). Phonics instruction helps children decode or sound out words by teaching them letter-sound relationships.

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Vocabulary development is vital  for reading comprehension. It involves understanding and using words effectively, and it impacts a child’s ability to read and understand texts.

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Fluency refers to the ability to read smoothly, accurately, and with expression. Fluency is a bridge between word recognition and comprehension, helping students understand the meaning of what they read.

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Comprehension is the ability to understand, remember, and communicate what has been read. Comprehension is a higher-level skill that builds upon phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, and fluency.

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Activity 1: Story Mapping

Description: Have students create story maps (graphic organizers) that outline the main elements of a story: characters, setting, problem, solution, etc.

Differentiation: For students with exceptionalities, offer visual supports or social stories, and break down the process into smaller steps.

Activity 2: Question and Answer Game

Description: After reading a short story or passage, ask students to answer comprehension questions related to the story. Use "wh" questions (who, what, where, when) to guide discussion.

Differentiation: For students with cognitive delays, ask yes/no or choice-based questions, and offer additional support through visuals or manipulatives to aid in understanding.

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Activity 1: Letter-Sound Match

Description: Students will match lowercase and uppercase letters with the corresponding pictures that begin with that letter sound (e.g., A with apple).

Differentiation: For students with exceptionalities, such as visual impairments, use tactile letters and objects to help reinforce letter-sound associations. Provide extra time and physical guidance if needed.

Activity 2: Word Building with Magnetic Letters

Description: Students will use magnetic letters or letter tiles to build simple CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words, such as "cat," "dog," or "sat."

Differentiation: For students with exceptionalities, such as those with fine motor difficulties, provide larger letters or letter tiles with raised edges to make it easier to manipulate them.

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Activity: "Letter Sound Bingo"

Description: Provide parents with a bingo card filled with letters and corresponding pictures. As they call out the sounds, children place markers on the matching letter.

Explanation: This activity reinforces letter-sound correspondence in a fun, engaging way. It’s flexible for students with exceptionalities because the visual or auditory cues can be adjusted to the child’s needs (e.g., using a device to call out the sounds for children with hearing impairments).

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Website: ABCmouse

Explanation: ABCmouse offers an interactive, gamified approach to phonics learning, with visual and auditory support for children. This website is accessible for children with learning disabilities through its customizable settings and the option for parents to track progress.

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Activity 1: Word Wall

Description: Create a word wall with new vocabulary words that students are learning. As students encounter new words, add them to the wall, and practice saying them aloud as a class.

Differentiation: For students with exceptionalities like dyslexia, you can color-code words by sound patterns or include images to enhance meaning.

Activity 2: Vocabulary Journals

Description: Students maintain a vocabulary journal where they write down new words, their meanings, and draw pictures to represent each word.

Differentiation: For students with fine motor delays, allow them to use audio recordings or voice-to-text apps to input their words, or pair with a peer for assistance in writing.

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Activity: "Word of the Day"

Description: Have parents introduce one new word each day and use it in sentences throughout the day. Encourage children to use the word in conversations and draw pictures of it.

Explanation: This activity promotes repeated exposure to new words, fostering a deeper understanding. It supports exceptional learners by allowing them to process vocabulary at their own pace, with visual or auditory cues.

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Activity 1: Choral Reading

Description: Have students read a passage or poem together as a group, practicing smooth and expressive reading.

Differentiation: For students with exceptionalities, such as speech delays, provide sentence strips with key words or phrases to follow along. Also, model expressive reading by emphasizing tone and rhythm.

Activity 2: Partner Reading

Description: Pair students together so they can take turns reading aloud. One student reads a page, and the other offers feedback and encouragement.

Differentiation: For students with exceptionalities like ADHD, give them a quiet space or allow them to use a recording device to listen and practice reading at their own pace.

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Activity: "Read-Aloud Practice"

Description: Parents can read a short story to their child first, and then have the child read it aloud to them, encouraging smooth and expressive reading.

Explanation: This activity builds fluency through repeated practice, and parents can adjust the pacing to meet the child’s needs, such as providing verbal cues for struggling readers.

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Website: ReadWorks

Explanation: ReadWorks provides leveled reading passages with comprehension questions, allowing parents and teachers to track fluency. This resource supports diverse learners with its wide variety of text types and scaffolded support options.

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Activity: "Picture Walk"

Description: Before reading a book, parents can do a picture walk through the pages with their child, asking questions like "What do you think will happen?" This primes the child for understanding the story.

Explanation: This helps young readers develop predictions and engage with the text before reading, a critical skill for building comprehension. For exceptional learners, this strategy can aid in creating context before the story.

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Website: Epic!

Explanation: Epic! provides access to a wide range of books for children and includes read-aloud features that support comprehension. It's a great tool for differentiating reading instruction, offering audio, text, and visual support for young learners.

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Website: VocabularySpellingCity

Explanation: This website helps students learn new vocabulary words through games and interactive activities. It’s customizable for students with exceptionalities and offers auditory support and various difficulty levels.

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Upgrade From VocabularySpellingCity to Vocabulary A-Z | Learning A-Z

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Vocabulary A-Z offers everything millions of teachers and students love about VocabularySpellingCity, plus so much more!

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Sedita, J. (2024, May 7). Phonics Instruction for English Learners. Keys to Literacy. Retrieved 1 30, 2025, from https://keystoliteracy.com/blog/phonics-instruction-for-english-learners/

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Phonics Instruction for English Learners - Keys to Literacy

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This post focuses on instruction of phonics for English learners. English learners benefit from the same explicit instruction of literacy skills, including phonics, as native English speakers, keeping in mind the special considerations of English learners regarding oral language proficiency, vocabulary and background knowledge, and attention to addressing new sounds (phonemes) of English. A structured literacy approach to teach phonics should be used: explicit, systematic, cumulative, and diagnostic.

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The Science of Reading; What Research Says About Effective Instruction. (n.d.). Scholastic Education Solutions. Retrieved January 31, 2025, from https://education.scholastic.com/content/dam/education/resources/5306-11_sor_topic-paper.pdf

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Five (5) Components of Reading. (n.d.). Read Naturally. Retrieved February 4, 2025, from https://www.readnaturally.com/research/5-components-of-reading

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In accordance with our commitment to deliver reading programs based on research-based instructional strategies, Read Naturally's programs develop and support the five (5) components of reading identified by the National Reading Panel -phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.

Phonemic Awareness

Phonemes, the smallest units making up spoken language, combine to form syllables and words. Phonemic awareness refers to the student's ability to focus on and manipulate these phonemes in spoken syllables and words. According to the National Reading Panel, teaching phonemic awareness to children significantly improves their reading more than instruction that lacks any attention to phonemic awareness.
Learn more about phonemic awareness

Phonics

Phonics is the relationship between the letters (or letter combinations) in written language and the individual sounds in spoken language. Phonics instruction teaches students how to use these relationships to read and spell words. The National Reading Panel indicated that systematic phonics instruction enhances children's success in learning to read, and it is significantly more effective than instruction that teaches little or no phonics.
Learn more about phonics

Fluency

Fluent readers are able to read orally with appropriate speed, accuracy, and proper expression. Fluency is the ability to read as well as we speak and to make sense of the text without having to stop and decode each word. The National Reading Panel's research findings concluded that guided oral reading and repeated oral reading had a significant and positive impact on word recognition, reading fluency, and comprehension in students of all ages.
Learn more about fluency

Vocabulary

Vocabulary development is closely connected to comprehension. The larger the reader's vocabulary (either oral or print), the easier it is to make sense of the text. According to the National Reading Panel, vocabulary can be learned incidentally through storybook reading or listening to others, and vocabulary should be taught both directly and indirectly. Students should be actively engaged in instruction that includes learning words before reading, repetition and multiple exposures, learning in rich contexts, incidental learning, and use of computer technology.
Learn more about vocabulary

Comprehension

Comprehension is the complex cognitive process readers use to understand what they have read. Vocabulary development and instruction play a critical role in comprehension. The National Reading Panel determined that young readers develop text comprehension through a variety of techniques, including answering questions (quizzes) and summarization (retelling the story).
Learn more about comprehension

Note: Progress in reading does not necessarily result in progress in spelling. Spelling instruction is needed to develop students' spelling skills.
Learn more about spelling

For more information

Learn more about the National Reading Panel
Intervention programs that address these reading components

Bibliography

Mehta, P. D., Foorman, B. R., Branum-Martin, L., & Taylor, W. P. (2005). Literacy as a unidimensional construct: Validation, sources of influence and implications in a longitudinal study in grades 1-4. Scientific Studies of Reading, 9(2), pp. 85-116.

National Reading Panel. (2000). Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. Washington, DC: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

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Five (5) Components of Reading :: Read Naturally, Inc.

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Our programs develop the National Reading Panel 's five (5) components of reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.

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Tolman, C., & Moats, L. (n.d.). Early Literacy Development Why Phonological Awareness Is Important for Reading and Spelling. Reading Rockets Launching Young Readers. https://www.readingrockets.org/topics/early-literacy-development/articles/why-phonological-awareness-important-reading-and

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Phoneme awareness is necessary for learning and using the alphabetic code

Phoneme awareness predicts later outcomes in reading and spelling

The majority of poor readers have relative difficulty with phoneme awareness and other phonological skills

Instruction in phoneme awareness is beneficial for novice readers and spellers

Phonological awareness interacts with and facilitates the development of vocabulary and word consciousness

Moats, L, & Tolman, C (2009). Excerpted from Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling (LETRS): The Speech Sounds of English: Phonetics, Phonology, and Phoneme Awareness (Module 2). Boston: Sopris West.

For more information on Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling (LETRS) visit Voyager Sopris .

For any reprint requests, please contact the author or publisher listed.

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Why Phonological Awareness Is Important for Reading and Spelling

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Phonological awareness is critical for learning to read any alphabetic writing system. And research shows that difficulty with phoneme awareness and other phonological skills is a predictor of poor reading and spelling development.