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I had high hopes for this app but found some issues that need to be addressed before I can give it a higher rating. As a Reading Specialist I will not continue to use it until those are made, for instance when segmenting sounds beginning blends should not go together in one sound box, they are 2 separate sounds and each need their own box. Also, the sound for /b/ sounds like /p/ and should be adjusted. I hope you make these changes.

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‎Phonics Awareness is a comprehensive, low cost educational app based on the pre-reading skills 1st graders must have as they move from hearing sounds, into seeing the letter as a representation for the sound. This is the beginning of true phonics learning. Teachers can easily integrate these lessons...

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‎"A wonderful app to help kids to start rhyming words." Rhyming activities provide the first steps in identifying the different sounds that make up a word and are a critical skill to master on the path towards becoming a good reader and a confident speaker. The goal of this application is to give...

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Reading Doctor | Apps for teaching kids to read and spell

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Blending, or the ability to join speech sounds together to make words, is a crucial phonemic awareness skill that helps students to read unfamiliar words.

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PHONEMIC AWARENESS By: Miranda Bird. - ppt video online download

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WHAT? Phonemic Awareness is the ability to detect, identify, and manipulate phonemes in spoken words. Phonemic awareness is not the same as phonics. Phonemic awareness is the understanding that spoken language can be broken into phonemes. Phonics- is the understanding of the relationship between phonemes and graphemes, the letters that represent the sounds in written language.

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There is a sequence of phonological awareness skills a child should develop. Use checklists for Kindergarten & 1st grade to check on your child's PA skills.

One skill that children in 1st grade should master, which is needed by all students learning to read, is the ability to segment spoken single-syllable words into their complete sequence of individual sounds .

Here is a video of a 1st grader demonstrating simple sound segmentation.

Children by the end of 1st grade typically master the basic skills of segmenting and blending sounds. Second graders and 3rd graders develop the more complex phonemic awareness skill of manipulating sounds, for example being able to delete sounds or substitute sounds in simple words.

For struggling readers, instruction beyond segmenting and blending sounds to the more complex skill of manipulating sounds, appears to have a strong, positive, long term impact on reading. Here is an example of the more complex skill of sound deletion. Teacher: "Say 'slip'." Student: "slip." Teacher: "Now say 'slip' without the /l/ sound." The student with the ability to manipulate sounds, in this case to delete phonemes, would say, "sip".
How do I determine my child's phonological awareness skills?
Ask your school to check on your child's phonological awareness skills. There are simple screeners which take only a few minutes. Here is an example of an older screener, the Test of Auditory Analysis Skills and a clip from part of the assessment which reveals that deleting final sounds in words was a difficult task for this young man.

Activities and Resources for Phonological Awareness

The Florida Center for Reading Research has many free printable student activities for reading. Explore the activities for phonological awareness ranging from easier tasks, such as Phoneme Matching, through more complex skills, such as Phoneme Segmenting, Blending and Manipulating.

Additional resources for teachers and home educators are:

Phonemic Awareness in Young Children, Marilyn J. Adams - a classroom curriculum covering beginning to advanced phonological awareness (in the supplementary pages)

The Road to the Code: A Phonological Awareness Program for young Children, Bachman and Ball, - integrates phonemic awareness and decoding and is designed for Kindergarteners and early 1st grade

The Intensive Phonological Awareness Program, Schuele and Murphy - developed for K-2nd grade to provide focused small group lessons.

Easy links to these books sold on Amazon are in the side bar.

Professional Assessments and Information

If an agency or the school through special education will be conducting an evaluation of your child here are 2 highly regarded assessments designed for use by professionals.

Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processes 2 and The Phonological Awareness Test 2

For psychologists and other reading professionals a good resource on the role of phonemic awareness and other essentials for reading intervention can be found in this book.

Essentials of Assessing, Preventing and Overcoming Reading Difficulties, D. A. Kilpatrick

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Phonological Awareness (PA) Module - Help For Reading

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There is a sequence of phonological awareness skills a child should develop. Use checklists for Kindergarten & 1st grade to check on your child's PA skills. One skill that children in 1st grade should master, which is needed by all students learning to read, is the ability to segment spoken single-syllable words into their complete sequence of individual sounds .

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Park Those Sounds!: Segmenting CVC Words into Phonemes in a Game

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It is the beginning of a new school year, after a school holiday of 6-8 weeks. Have you decided what you are going to start teaching in the area of phonics? Have you thought of the phonics assessment you will conduct this year? One of the great features of Phonics Hero (get your free Teacher Account here) is that it provides child and class progress reports so you can quickly see what a student or class had achieved by the end of term last year.

Watch this video to see how to access these reports:

The Summer Effect

It is dangerous, however, to assume that a student can or should pick up where he left off. In my experience, in the absence of 6-8 weeks of phonics revision and application, some students (in particular, those with specific learning difficulties related to memory deficits) have slipped back in their level of performance by up to a full term. In contrast, other students, who have been revising and/or applying their phonics knowledge and skills over the holidays, may now be performing at a higher level than before.

This 'summer effect' is particularly pronounced with disadvantaged primary students, who have been found to lose 1.5 years of reading skills over the summer months (Cooper et al. 1996). You don't want to start off the year with a frustrated or bored student. How can you know where you should start teaching phonics? By assessing current phonic skills using our phonics assessment resources!

What Phonic Skills Should I Assess in the Early Years?

Decoding (reading) and encoding (writing) require a number of phonics-related skills and each of the following should be assessed:

Phonological and phonemic awareness

Letter (grapheme) - sound (phoneme) correspondences (GPCs)

Blending of sounds (oral and written)

Segmenting of words (oral and written)

Sentence reading and writing

What Phonics Assessment can I Use?

a) Phonological and phonemic awareness

The skills of syllabification, rhyme recognition, and phoneme isolation and manipulation are central to accurate decoding and encoding. There are a number of good Phonological Awareness tests that you can use. These include the Sutherland Phonological Awareness Test Revised, the Preschool and Primary Inventory of Phonological Awareness, and the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing.

A free basic Phonological Awareness Skills Screener is available here.

b) Letter-sound correspondence

To assess letter-sound correspondences, use a checklist drawn from your literacy program. Here are your phonics assessments for Phonics Hero.

To assess phoneme/sound knowledge, show the student the prompt sheet. Point to a letter(s), for example 's' and ask 'When you see this, what sound does your mouth make?' Record accuracy with a 'y' or 'n'. Where multiple responses are expected (e.g. 'c' as /k/ and /s/) note those known. This must be an individual assessment.

For Part 2 and 3, the prompt sheet includes all of the spelling choices within that unit (e.g. 'ea', 'ee', 'y' and 'e'). When assessing Part 2, point to each spelling choice and ask the child: "When you see this, what long vowel sound does your mouth make?" Remember that some letter groups can represent more than one sound (e.g. 'e' as in 'we' or as in 'egg'). If a child gives an alternative sound, ask: "What other sound can your mouth make when you see these letters?"

To assess spelling of the sound-letter correspondence, provide the student with the sound and ask him to provide the possible spelling/s. This can be an individual or group assessment. Where multiple responses are expected (e.g. /s/ spelled 's', 'ss', 'c', 'ce' or 'se'), note the spellings known. You can use the same assessment record we have provided.

c) Blending of sounds

Ability to orally blend sounds is included in many phonological awareness tests.

It is compulsory in all state schools in the UK to administer to Year 1 students a Phonics Screening Check. This is administered again at the end of Year 2 if students have not reached the expected standard in Year 1. The check consists of 20 real words and 20 pseudo-words that a pupil reads aloud to the teacher. Increasingly, the Australian states are looking at the development of an Australian version of this test for Year 1 students - read more about it here.

In both checks, students are given nonsense/pseudo words (words like 'spret' or 'ged') to read to ensure that they use phonic knowledge and decoding skills rather than other word recognition strategies such as remembering the shape of a known word or using pictures to guess the word.

Here are your phonics assessments for nonsense words.

I always record incorrect responses and analyse them later to determine what knowledge and understandings are absent.

d) Segmenting of words

Oral segmentation of words is included in phonological awareness tests. There are a number of standardised spelling tests on the market, but these may not be very helpful in the determination of where to start teaching. Again, here are your assessment tools:

Record any incorrect responses on the sheet in the Result box. This will allow you to analyse the part of the word that is problematic.

e) Reading and spelling of irregular words

Each literacy program has its own list of phonically irregular words to be learned for reading and spelling (containing words such as 'said' and 'friend'). This should form the basis of a checklist. Here are your assessments to align with Phonics Hero:

Part 1: Prompt sheet and assessment sheet

Part 2: Prompt sheet and assessment sheet

Ask the student to read and spell the words on your list.

f) Reading and writing of sentences

Decodable text (containing words made up of only GPCs and sight words explicitly taught) should be used to assess sentence reading and writing. There are a number of commercial decodable reading series from which you can draw sentences. SPELD SA's website provides free-to-download decodable texts. To assess writing, dictate sentences in phrases of about 3 words.

The Phonics Assessment in Phonics Hero

When children start playing Phonics Hero they will be presented with the option to start at the beginning or take a phonics assessment, like this:

If you choose the assessment option, the game uses nonsense words for the phonics assessment, like this:

One thing to remember is your phonics assessment is always going to be better than a computer's so I would recommend you move the children based on your own data. You can move children's levels from your Teacher Account - this video shows you how.

Differentiation

Reading and writing are developmental processes, so within any year group there is likely to be at least a five-year spread in skills and knowledge. This is why an individual phonics assessment at the start of the academic year is so important. Once you have the information about a student's knowledge and skills, you can assign that student to the appropriate starting place. The Phonics Hero program can be used alongside a variety of explicit, systematic phonics instruction programs. It allows you to individualise a student's learning, determining the Part and Level on which he should start work and how long he should spend there.

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Phonics Assessment: Don't Assume - Assess Every Student!

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It is the beginning of a new school year, after a school holiday of 6-8 weeks. Have you decided what you are going to start teaching in the area of phonics? Have you thought of the phonics assessment you will conduct this year?

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Drumming Out Syllables: Foundations for Phonemic Awareness

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Phonics, phonological awareness and phonemic awareness are all part of early reading. But people often confuse them. While these terms are related, they're not the same thing. Here's a closer look at what they are and how they work together to get kids ready to read.

Phonological Awareness

Phonological awareness covers many skills. (One of them is phonemic awareness.) It isn't based on written language- kids develop phonological awareness by listening. When kids have this set of skills, they're able to hear and "play" with the sounds of spoken language. It's the foundation for learning to read.

Early phonological awareness happens at the level of words and syllables. You know your child has it if she can clap out each word in a sentence or march to each syllable in her name ( E- li- za- beth). She'll also be able to recognize and come up with words that rhyme or that have the same beginning sound.

You can sharpen your child's early skills by reading certain types of children's books to her. The books that help the most emphasize rhyme, alliteration (using similar consonants), repeated phrases and predictable patterns.

Once kids have a strong awareness of how spoken language works at the level of words and syllables, they can begin to focus on the smaller units of sound. That's known as phonemic awareness.

Phonemic Awareness

Phonemic awareness is usually the last of the phonological awareness skills to develop. When kids have this skill, they can hear and "play" with the smallest units of sounds (phonemes) in words and syllables.

The two most important phonemic awareness skills are segmenting and blending. Segmenting is breaking a word apart into its individual sounds. Blending is saying a word after each of its sounds are heard.

If your child can segment, she is able to say f- i- sh after hearing the word fish. If she can blend, she's able to say the word fish after hearing the individual sounds f- i- sh.

Kids need those skills to learn the connection between word sounds and written letters or words. Many kids who are at risk for reading issues or who have a reading disability have poor phonemic awareness. A good phonics teaching program can help.

Phonics

Phonics instruction teaches kids to connect letters with sounds, break words into sounds, and blend sounds into words. Kids use this knowledge to become readers and writers. Schools typically teach these skills from kindergarten through second grade.

The most effective phonics programs are very structured. They follow a clear, step-by-step order of instruction. They also use multiple senses to help kids learn. For example, kids might use their fingers to write a letter in shaving cream while saying the sound associated with that letter. (This multisensory structured approach is used in programs based on Orton-Gillingham, considered the gold standard for helping kids with reading issues.)

Good phonics lessons begin with a review of previously taught sounds. Then a new sound is introduced. Students are told, for example, that the letter m stands for the m sound as in milk.

Blending, sounding out and spelling activities using that new sound come next. Being able to decode text with previously learned sounds-plus the new sound-follow these activities.

Phonological awareness, phonemic awareness and phonics build on one another. There are ways you can help your young child develop these skills before she even gets to grade school.

If your grade school child has trouble with these early reading skills, you may want to consider having her evaluated. Understanding her issues with reading will allow you to get the best support possible.

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Phonological Awareness, Phonemic Awareness and Phonics: What You Need to Know

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Phonics, phonological awareness and phonemic awareness are all part of early reading. But people often confuse them. While these terms are related, they're not the same thing. Here's a closer look at what they are and how they work together to get kids ready to read. Phonological awareness covers many skills.

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First Grade Phonemic Awareness Lesson from my Phonemic Awareness Bundle.

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Why Phonological Awareness Is Important for Reading and Spelling

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This fact is well proven: Phonological awareness is critical for learning to read any alphabetic writing system (Ehri, 2004; Rath, 2001; Troia, 2004). Phonological awareness is even important for reading other kinds of writing systems, such as Chinese and Japanese. There are several well-established lines of argument for the importance of phonological skills to reading and spelling.

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Phonological awareness is the ability to recognize and manipulate the spoken parts of words. The levels of phonological awareness are, from simplest to most complex: syllables, onset-rime, and phonemes. Phonemic awareness is the ability to identify and manipulate individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words.