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Our schools at a glance | Going to a public school

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Alphabetical index of common topics of inquiry about NSW public schools including attendance, curriculum, homework, parent organisations, transport an

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Reading Doctor | Apps for teaching kids to read and spell

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Digraphs, Trigraphs & Endings Easily teach the links between letter patterns and speech sounds for reading and spelling with phonics.

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How Now Brown Cow: Phonological Awareness Activities

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Phonemic awareness training is essential for students who are at risk for reading difficulties. This article describes the components of phonemic awareness and provides activities that special educators can use to provide this training to at risk students.

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In my work as a teacher and reading specialist, I have found time and time again that children who struggle with reading often struggle with phonological awareness, too.

And that makes sense, right? If you have trouble hearing the sounds in words, it's going to be harder to put sounds together when you're decoding. It's also going to be harder to spell words if you can't clearly hear their sounds.

For this reason, I always assess my struggling readers' phonological awareness. Based upon the results, I incorporate quick phonological awareness activities into their intervention routine. I've seen very positive results from doing so!

In today's post, I'll describe the different phonological awareness skills I teach, as well as provide free phonological awareness interventions to help your students improve in each area.

And although today's post is part of my series on supporting struggling decoders, the ideas and materials are appropriate for most students in the primary grades. The vast majority of early readers benefit from phonological awareness instruction.

What Is Phonological Awareness?

Phonological awareness is, simply, the awareness of the sounds that make up spoken language. It doesn't involve alphabet letters (connecting sounds to print is phonics).

An example of a phonological awareness activity would be a teacher saying a word aloud and students saying each individual sound in the word. An example of a phonics activity would be a teacher writing a word on the board and having students say each individual sound in the word while looking at the letters.

It's beneficial (for K-1 teachers) to spend a 10-15 minutes each day teaching phonological awareness by itself (with no letters or print involved).

At the same time, phonological awareness skills can develop through work with actual print. For example, when children segment words and write their sounds, this helps them practice the phonological awareness skill of segmenting (even though it is technically a phonics-based activity).

Furthermore, it's important for us to help students understand the connection between phonological awareness activities and reading/writing. Saying things like, "You know how we practice saying each sound in a word? That helps us figure out how to spell words" can help them see the connection.

To summarize: phonological awareness does not involve print (alphabet letters or words), and beginning readers should have opportunities to practice working with sounds (without connecting them to letters). At the same time, phonological awareness can be developed through activities involving print, and students need to understand the connection between hearing sounds in words, reading, and writing.

One other note: You've probably also heard the term "phonemic awareness." Phonemic awareness is a subset of phonological awareness - it describes one set of skills that falls under the larger category of phonological awareness. I'll define phonemic awareness and provide teaching activities later on in this post.

What Phonological Awareness Skills Should Students Learn?

Children's phonological awareness skills typically develop along this continuum (adapted from Chard and Dickson's article "Phonological Awareness: Instructional and Assessment Guidelines"):

See the original image at http://www.ldonline.org/article/6254/

Not all children develop in the same way, of course. But kids are typically going to learn to identify rhymes before, say, they can segment the individual sounds in words.

Assessment can help you determine where students are "at" along this continuum, and what they need to work on. I don't recommend administering lengthy phonemic awareness assessments to all your students multiple times a year. However, if you notice that certain students are struggling with either phonological awareness or decoding, you may want to spend a little time figuring out what they need to work on.

A phonological awareness assessment can be very quick and simple. If you use my phonics program, From Sounds to Spelling, you already have phonological awareness assessments (and lessons) built into the program. If you'd like to learn more about From Sounds to Spelling, you can do so at this link.

Reading Rockets also has some general guidelines for creating your own assessment here. An assessment can be as simple as asking a child to identify pictures of rhyming words, generate a word that rhymes, count the number of words in a sentence, count the number of syllables in a word, say the first sound in a few different words, and/or verbally segment a couple of CVC words.

What Should We Do When Students Struggle with Phonological Awareness?

If our assessment results (and observations) indicate that certain students struggle with phonological awareness, we can take specific steps to help them improve.

First of all, we can plan daily practice activities to develop phonological awareness. Research shows that students who struggle with phonological awareness benefit from practicing these skills in a small group setting. However, that doesn't mean that you have to eliminate whole-class phonological awareness instruction.

During my one-on-one or small group phonological awareness activities, I like to have students close their eyes sometimes. This helps them focus on just listening. We show students so many visuals throughout the day that it can be a bit confusing for them when we just want them to listen!

I've also found that hands-on activities can be helpful for struggling students. These same students sometimes have attention issues and can quickly get bored with activities that involve only listening to or speaking sounds. The rest of this post will focus on specific, mostly hands-on activities that you can use to teach phonological awareness. To receive all of the activities and materials (for free!), sign up here:

Rhyming Activities

Rhyming is one of the most basic components of phonological awareness. Using nursery rhymes, poetry, and songs in the classroom (including in a small group setting) is helpful in helping children hear and identify words that rhyme.

When you work with a nursery rhyme, poem, or song, model how to listen for and find words that rhyme. You can say something like this: "Words that rhyme sound the same at the end, like mug and bug. While I read this poem to you, I'm going to listen for words that rhyme." As you go through the text, stop when you hear words that rhyme and point them out to the children. The kids will soon be able to join in and find words that rhyme!

As children's rhyming abilities improve, you can have them clap or raise their hands when they hear a pair of words that rhyme. You can also begin asking them to generate their own rhyming words ("What rhymes with ___?"). To connect rhyming words to print, use a highlighter to show students how rhyming words often have the same endings (i.e. the words mug and bug in the example above both end with "ug."

For some hands-on rhyming fun, try playing Rhyming Words Memory. First, have students practice making matches with the cards turned face-up. Then, turn them all face-down and mix them up. Students take turns trying to find pairs of pictures that represent rhyming words. Make sure that students name each picture aloud when they turn it over!

Rhyming word picture sorts are another fun activity. Divide a piece of paper into two columns, and draw or place a word at the top of each column (like "dog" and "pen"). Have students sort additional pictures into the columns, depending upon what each word rhymes with. For a challenge, students can also draw their own pictures to add to each column.

All of these activities are appropriate for your entire class, as well as for students who struggle with phonological awareness. Struggling students will benefit most, however, from participating in these activities in a small group setting.

Sentence Segmenting

Sentence segmenting is the next skill shown on the continuum. This is the ability to hear the individual words in sentences. Although sentence segmenting is quite simple for adults, it can be very challenging for children. Becauseinrealitywetalklikethis, not........like.......this. Because our spoken words flow together, it's not easy for little ones to distinguish one word from the next!

I try to integrate sentence segmenting throughout the day, especially when I'm modeling writing. When I want to write a sentence, I say it aloud to students, modeling how I count each word on my fingers. Then, we say the sentence together, and the kids count the words on their fingers. Next, I show them how I draw a line for each word. This drives home the point that sentences are composed of individual words, and we have to listen carefully to hear them.

In addition to this daily practice, struggling students also benefit from sentence segmenting practice in a one-on-one or small group setting. Practice can be simple - just say a sentence aloud and have students count each word on their fingers. You can also use counters and a grid to have students push one counter into a square for each word they hear:

As with all of the materials pictured in this post, you can get this resource by signing up here (you only need to sign up once to receive all of these materials in one download):

Sentence segmenting helps with key emergent reading and writing skills, like pointing one-to-one and spacing between words. Explicitly point out the connection between any sentence segmenting activities you do and the literacy activities that they support.

Syllable Blending and Segmenting

Next up is syllable blending and segmenting! I always start with blending, or having students put together syllables to form a complete word, because I feel that it's a bit easier for students to master. To practice blending, say the syllables in a word aloud (cat...er...pil...lar) and then have students pronounce the complete word correctly. You can mix things up by showing students a picture, saying the syllables aloud to name something in the picture ("Do you see the el...e...phant?"), and then having students say the word and point it out in the picture.

To practice segmenting (breaking words up into their syllables), students can jump, clap, or tap for each syllable they hear in a word you say aloud.

You can also try a syllable picture sort. Have students each picture aloud, count the number of syllables in the word, and then sort the picture:

Helping children understand that a word can have multiple syllables is vital in getting students to point one-to-one when reading. You might see some students pointing multiple times when they are "reading" a multisyllabic word, because they think that 1 syllable = 1 printed word. Help them see the connection between the syllable segmentation activities and their pointing during reading ("Do you remember that we found out that some words have a couple of syllables? Even if a word has several syllables, like computer, we only point to that word once because it's still just one word.")

Onset-Rime Blending and Segmenting

Onset-rime blending involves being able to say the complete word when the first chunk (onset) and the vowel + the rest of the word (rime) are broken apart. For example, if you say "r-oad" and the child can say "road," that child can blend an onset and rime.

To practice onset-rime blending, have students practice this skill for just a minute or so per day - it's a great way to transition to activities.

You can also gather struggling students in a small group, show them a picture, and ask them to find certain objects ("Can you find a c-up?"or "Can you find the th-umb?").

Onset-rime segmenting is the opposite: students are the ones who have to break up a word into its onset and rime (taking gum and turning it into g-um, for example). After you've practiced this skill as a class, you can have students break up into pairs (or work with you in a small group) to play my Onset & Rime Mystery Word Game (included in your download).

To play the game, give pairs of students a stack of picture cards. They should keep the picture cards between them, face-down. One student takes the top card, secretly looks at the picture, and says the onset and rime. The second student has to say what the complete word is. Students then reverse roles for the next picture.

Again, you can sign up to receive all these materials here:

Phoneme Blending and Segmenting

Next on the continuum is phoneme blending and segmenting! Phonemes are the smallest sounds in spoken language, like the sound /t/ or /ch/. Phonemic awareness is the awareness of those individual sounds.

Phoneme blending is the ability to put together individual sounds to make a word (knowing that /s/ /i/ /t/ makes the word "sit").

You can play "guess the word" for a minute or two each day by breaking up a word into its individual sounds and then having the children say the complete word. Check out this not-fancy video of me demonstrating two different possible ways to incorporate movement into phoneme blending (they can also be used for working on phoneme segmentation):

To have students practice phoneme blending in a small group, print out a variety of pictures and spread them out on the table. Say the sounds in one of the words, and then have students all point to the picture. (This is best done in a very small group of 2-3 students to avoid some students simply following the lead of the others.)

Phoneme segmenting is a bit trickier. It requires students to be able to break apart a word into its individual sounds (i.e. turning "top" into /t/ /o/ /p/.

In addition to daily oral practice, Elkonin boxes are another great way to practice phoneme segmenting. Give students a small grid with 3 or 4 boxes (depending upon what type of words you are working on). Have them touch one box or push a counter into a box for each sound that they hear in a word.

I recommend using Elkonin boxes in a one-on-one or small group setting so you can closely monitor how students are doing.

Phoneme Identification and Manipulation

Last but not least, we have phoneme identification and manipulation! When I say "phoneme identification," I mean the ability to identify whether a sound in a word comes first, in the middle, or last. This skill is helpful in teaching students to write words phonetically. You can have students practice with the Elkonin boxes featured above ("Say each sound in the word hop. Now touch the box that shows where the sound /p/ comes.")

Phoneme manipulation is the ability to add, remove, and substitute phonemes in words. Here are some examples (say the words out loud if you are confused by any of these!):

Phoneme Addition: "If I add /t/ to the end of go, what do I get?" (goat)

Phoneme Deletion: "If I take away the /c/ sound in cat, what word do I have?" (at)

Phoneme Substitution: "Say the word hop. If I say /t/ instead of /p/, what do I get?" (hot)

Phoneme manipulation can be fun, playful, and helpful in getting kids more skilled in working with words. It may also be difficult at first, but research shows that it can further develop as kids learn to read.

Conclusions

To best support your struggling readers with phonological awareness skills, remember the following:

Many, but not all, struggling readers have poor phonological awareness

Instruction should be brief - the majority of your instructional time should be spent on phonics

Phonological awareness skills will develop over time and may take lots of practice for some children

What Causes Decoding Difficulties in Beginning Readers, and What Can Teachers Do About It? How To Analyze Running Records (And Get a Ton of Valuable Information About Your Beginning Readers!) How to Teach Decoding Strategies to Struggling Readers Phonics Interventions for Struggling Readers in K-2 How To Give Struggling Readers More Practice Time Through Volume Reading Chard, D. J., & Dickson, S. V. (1999). Phonological awareness instructional and assessment guidelines. Intervention in School and Clinic, 34(5), 261-270. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. 2000. Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction: Reports of the Subgroups. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, NIH Pub. No 00-4754. *The authors of these texts are in no way affiliated with this blog - I am referencing their work as a means of explaining and supporting the ideas I set forth in this post.*

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Phonological Awareness Interventions for Struggling Readers - Learning at the Primary Pond

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In my work as a teacher and reading specialist, I have found time and time again that children who struggle with reading often struggle with phonological awareness, too. And that makes sense, right? If you have trouble hearing the sounds in words, it's going to be harder to put sounds together when you're decoding.

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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!

The ability to listen closely is a key ingredient of phonemic awareness.

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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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Phonological awareness & Phonemic awareness activities

It has taken a while but we have finally completed our Phonological Awareness Activities Packet. This packet has been a huge undertaking but we wanted to accomplish a few things with it:

1. Align the phonemic awareness activities on this page below with the Common Core Standards.

2. Create new phonemic awareness activities for the standards we did not have existing activities for.

3. Put all the activities in one download!

What we ended up with is a 58 page Phonological Awareness Activities Download.
The file was so large that we could not upload it to our Download Central Page so we placed it in Katie's TpT Store. Here are some sample pics for you. Click any pic to enlarge.

This is our favorite part about the new download! You'll get a 30-page phonological awareness progression for ways to help your students at the word, syllable, and sound level. Simply cut the page down the middle, punch a whole in the corner, and bind with a metal ring! It's perfect to do with your students when you have a few free minutes...and it's super handy. Click to enlarge the pics.

Head on over to Katie's TpT Store to purchase this packet for just $3 or keep scrolling down for all of our FREE phonemic awareness activities.

Want an easy and effective way to track multiple students' phonological awareness skills? Print off this template! List the names of students in the left hand column and place check marks under the skills when a child has mastered them!

Syllable: Phonemic Awareness Activities

Using different items such as hand clappers, drums, or tennis rackets you can have children determine the number of syllables in a given word. For example, you would tap a drum two times for the word "sister" because it has two syllables. For increased difficulty, tap the drum (any number of times) and have your child think of a word that contains that same number of syllables.

Using the lyrics to "Hickety Pickety," have your child say, clap the syllables, and whisper their name to you.

Write the names of students in your classroom or members of your family. Have you child color a smiley face for each syllable in a given name and make a tally mark for each syllable.

Copy a "Classroom Syllable Graph" for each student in your classroom. Say the name of a student and have them color a square above the correct number of syllables. A fun way to combine phonemic awareness activities and math practice!

Help your child find items in different rooms in your home. Sort them by syllables. Write words (or draw pictures) for each object.

Beginning & Ending Sounds: Phonemic Awareness Activities

Tell your child you are going to teach them a song that will help them discover new words by taking off parts (sounds) of the word. Teach this song and let them fill in the last word. After a few verses using new words, invite the children to sing along. Other possible words to use include:

Beginning Sounds: boat (oat), farm (arm), meat (eat), bus (us), sled (lead), hand (and), & sit (it).

Ending Sounds: hammer (ham), soap (so), little (lit), meat (me), & boat (bow).

Segmenting & blending: phonemic awareness activities

Use these sound boxes to help children segment sounds in words. Simply print, laminate, and cut in half each card. Place one game chip under each box. Students say the name of each picture and then push up a chip for each sound in that word. Great for small group instruction!

Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes

Give students a word with 1-4 phonemes (sounds). Have them stand up and touch their head, shoulders, knees, and toes as they are saying the sounds in words. For example, the word "cat" would be /c/ (head), /a/ (shoulders), and /t/ (knees). A great active, phonemic awareness activity for helping students with segmenting!

Tell your child that you are going to teach them a song that will help them hear all of the sounds in a word. Teach this song and let them blend the sounds together to make a word. Sing the song a couple times, substituting a new word each time. Scroll down on this page to open a list of words with 4-6 phonemes (sounds) for ideas!

Place the cards face-up in random order on a flat surface. Have your child put the pictures together. Say a sound for each picture part while slowly sliding the parts away from each other. Then have your child say a sound for each picture part while slowly sliding the parts together. Once they are back together, say the whole word and continue with other picture cards

Using the above template, write words with 1-5 sounds in the left-hand column. Have students count how many sounds they hear in each word and write that number in the middle column. Give your child 5 bean bags and place a basket in front of them (distance depends on their ability to throw). Children throw a bean bag for each sound they hear in a given word. A point is received for each bean bag that makes it into the basket. (Make sure your child is saying the sounds they hear as they throw the bean bag). When they are finished throwing, have them count up their points to determine the grand total.

Place a green, yellow, and red mat on the floor (in that order). Begin by giving your child a word with 1-3 sounds. Have your child say the sounds they hear as they jump from mat to mat. For increased difficulty, move the mats so they are further apart.

This template can be used similar to those of Elkonin boxes for segmenting words into sounds. Give your child a word with 1-5 sounds and have them move a token into a box for each phoneme. It's a good idea to use different colored tokens and make sure your child is moving from left to right, just as if they were reading a word.

Have your child look at each picture and determine the number of sounds in that word. Color a box for each sound.

Here you will find a list of short and long vowel words with 4-6 phonemes (sounds). Before you use this list with your child/class, make sure they have mastered segmenting 1-3 phoneme words. These words can be used with the following phonemic awareness activities for segmenting:

This segmenting activity is easy to do and it doesn't require any materials but your hands! Have your child/class place their hands together. Give them a word. Each time they hear a sound in a word, have them say it and move their hands further apart.

This is the same concept as the segmenting activity above, only using silly putty to stretch the sounds in words. Using the silly putty helps children to visualize words that have a few sounds and words that have many sounds. (Children really get excited when they find words with many sounds, causing the silly putty to break apart).

This way of stretching words is great for students who like movement! Use a yoga mat and begin by explaining that it's important to stretch your body before you can stretch your brain. Give your child a set of directions to stretch their body. For example, tell them to slowly touch their toes, reach high in the air, place arms out to the side, and roll their head slowly. Once they have stretched their bodies, they are ready to stretch words! A fantastic multi-sensory phonemic awareness activity.

Using inexpensive night lights is a great way to help children learn to say sounds in words. Line up the night lights and say a word. Have your child say the sounds in the word as they turn the lights on. Repeat this process with the same word, but have your child say the sounds while they turn off the night lights. (It's always a good idea to teach your child to work from left to right! This typically is best to do in the small group setting when working on 1-4 phoneme words).

Using magnetic bingo chips and a cut-apart egg carton, place a chip in each slot. Give your child a word with 1-6 phonemes and have them pick up a chip while they say each sound. Like in the previous activity, it's best to teach your child to work from left to right.

Rhyming: Phonemic Awareness activities

Rhyme Time Bingo

Check out our new rhyming bingo game to play with children in the small group setting or at literacy centers. Directions are attached!

Want a fun way to help children learn to rhyme? Try this game with 2-4 children...Great for small group instruction and centers! Directions are attached.

By cutting and laminating the following cards, you can provide a fun and easy way to help children increase their rhyming skills.

Each week and new chant or poem is introduced. Students practice reading these poems through various activities and send them home each Thursday to share with family members.

Mystery Bag

Using an old book bag filled with random objects is a great way to help children with rhyming. Find things that are of meaning to you or place objects in the book bag that will make them laugh. See how many words you can think of that rhyme with that object, even if it is not a real word!

Track your class student rhyming progress using the "Rhyming Groups Folder". Glue the following four tabs on the inside of a manila folder, laminate, and use Post-Its to move individual students' rhyming progression.

Can't Hear/Can't Produce Rhymes

Can Hear/Can't Produce Rhymes

Can Hear/Can Produce Some Rhymes

Can Hear/Can Produce Rhymes Consistently

Learning the Difference between letters, sounds, syllables, & sentences: phonemic awareness activities

By enlarging and laminating this template your students can determine the letters, sounds, and syllables in new words you are working on in the classroom. (Kinkos is a great place to have documents enlarged). This helps children visualize that some words might have a lot of letters, but not a lot of sounds and vice versa.

Letter, Sound, Syllable, Word, & Sentence Poster Template

Cut out the cards and glue each to the top of a large poster. Provide your students/child with old magazines and newspapers. Help them cut out uppercase and lowercase letters, sounds, syllables, words, and sentences and glue of the appropriate poster. For "sounds" and "syllables" have your child use pictures of objects. Cut the objects according to the number of sounds and syllables. For example, the word "cat" would be cut into three pieces to represent the sound /k/ /a/ /t/. A great multi-sensory phonemic awareness activity.
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It has taken a while but we have finally completed our Phonological Awareness Activities Packet. This packet has been a huge undertaking but we wanted to accomplish a few things with it: Align the phonemic awareness activities on this page below with the Common Core Standards.

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Phonemic Activities for the Preschool or Elementary Classroom

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Activities that stimulate phonemic awareness in preschool and elementary school children are one sure way to get a child ready for reading! Here are eight of them from expert Marilyn Jager Adams.

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Super-dooper Rockstar Activities for teaching Phonemic Awareness!!!!

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Super-dooper Rockstar Activities for teaching Phonemic Awareness!!!!