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PSF with Phoneme Segmentation Board/Organizer + Manipulatives (beware of how you face your hands when tapping - to the class or in small group)

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PSF with Phoneme Segmentation Board/Organizer + Manipulatives (beware of how you face your hands when tapping - to the class or in small group)

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Dibels Progress Monitoring PSF printable

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Dibels Progress Monitoring PSF printable

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Drills

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Printable pages of PSF

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Workbooks + Guide Before Explode the Code 

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Workbooks + Guide Before Explode the Code 

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Explode the Code authors made a pre-literacy workbook series (Get Ready, Get Set, Go for the Code ABC) which teaches the 21 consonants, and their sounds as well as letter formation through visual, auditory, and kinesthetic activities. Students also learn print concepts.

Students:

practice fine-motor skills and letter formation through tracing and writing consonants.

learn through visual activities.

use matching exercises to develop visual discrimination and letter recognition.

reinforce letter recognition through the use of capital and lowercase letters.

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1st Grade Blast Classroom Setup Virtual Components - Primary Level - SY 2025-2026 | Really Great Reading

Lesson 2 (Tuesdays) involve phonemic awareness practice.

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Explore Really Great Reading’s free Letter Tile Freeplay and enhance literacy instruction. Help students build, segment, and spell with digital letter tiles to strengthen their phonics skills.

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SPIRE 1 - Lesson Plan section related to PSF

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SPIRE 1 - Lesson Plan section related to PSF

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Scroll to pages 1-2 (or 16-17) to see the full lesson plan and reinforcement plan. spire_3ed_1_blackline_eps5703_book.pdf

SPIRE is 45-60 minutes, because there are ten steps, but it can be easily divided into 3-4 steps per day (20-30 minutes).

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SPIRE has ten steps, and the segmentation step can happen within the first 3 steps.

SPIRE Phoneme Chart covers multiple steps of the 10 step lessons used for research-proven reading intervention program

Phonemic chart combines visual, auditory, and kinesthetic (hands-on) learning styles to provide an effective study resource for rhymes, blending, and segmentation

Vocabulary chart for students can be used for self-practice, one-on-one direct instruction, or for educational vocabulary, spelling, and oral vocalization games

There are assorted white circles (representing consonant sounds), green circles (vowel sounds).

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Steps 4-5 incorporate more phoneme work, including explicit spelling of sounds (letters) and short words.

This is ideal for K 2-phoneme words like:

am

an

at

in

it

on

ox

up

us

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Sounds Sensible has five steps. The third is phoneme segmentation which is related to the skills needed for PSF. All items are scripted in the teacher's guide.

Sounds Sensible 3rd Edition Lesson Sampler.pdf

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Heggerty también está completamente en español. El aspecto de la conciencia fonológica se puede dar de la misma manera en español.

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The Heggerty Phonemic Awareness curriculum for first grade includes:

24 weeks of daily lessons that focus on phoneme isolation, blending, segmenting, and manipulating sounds in 7-12 minutes.

Lessons are scripted.

Instruction begins with larger sound units and progresses to phonemes, ensuring a comprehensive understanding of sound.

Weekly lesson plans provide structured guidance for teachers, emphasizing oral and auditory skills without printed words.

It also integrates early literacy skills such as alphabet knowledge and language awareness.

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Note pages 3-4 state a K-1 lesson is supposed to be 120 minutes (!!), and small group is 40 minutes...

The "Word Work" (25 minutes) includes activities that pertain to PSF though.

• Fluency

• Phonemic Awareness

• Phonics

• Handwriting

• High-Frequency Words

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Page 14 indicates phonemic awareness activities which are similar to K.

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Unit 3 - Word Play Activity

Students apply the letter-sound correspondences to determine something that has not been memorized.

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Research has shown that the use of keywords works as a memory device to help students associate the sound relationship to the letter. The Drill Sounds/Warm-Up activity reinforces the alphabetic principle and allows students an opportunity to warm up for each lesson by practicing the letters, keywords, and sounds they have already learned. The 2–3-minute sounds drill is the only drill aspect of Fundations, and is designed to create fast neurotransmission pathways to access sounds (sound mastery and automaticity).

Level K - short vowel sounds are emphasized and practiced daily in the Drill Sounds/Warm-Up and Vowel Extension activities because students are taught the closed-syllable pattern, where the vowel is short.

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Finger tapping adds a powerful tactile (hands-on) component to segmenting and clarifying phonemes before blending them to read the word. It helps to develop a student's awareness about the way phonemes are coarticulated when they are blended.

Isolating phonemes in a spoken word happens in Echo/Find Words (beginning Unit 3). To teach phoneme segmentation for spelling, the same tapping method is used. A student hears the word dictated and then he or she taps out each sound. The teacher (or students) use the corresponding Letter Tiles to form the word to reinforce segmentation skills and the spelling-reading connection.

In the Word Play-Make Words for Decoding and Echo/Finds Words activities, teachers are directed to manipulate the sounds in words.

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Throughout Unit 1, there are phonological activities that teach letter-sound correspondence. Phonemic awareness activities include Word Play - Make Words for Decoding, Make it Fun, and Echo/Find Words:

identifying phonemes (sounds)

blending phonemes to form words

segmenting words into phonemes (sounds)

deleting and adding phonemes to form new words

substituting phonemes to make new words

Fundations instructs students to listen to the seperate phonemes in a word and develop an understanding for spoken language; this can be done with card manipulation and the sound-tapping process.

Teachers can use the letter manipulatives (Sound Cards and Letter Tiles) to support the understanding of phoneme segmentation and manipulation, and identification of initial, medial, and final sounds in CVC words. This is linked to the alphabetic principle (letter-sound/grapheme phoneme correspondence).

Word-

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Source: GreatLeapsReport.pdf

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PDF K Sample - Scroll to Week 11 - 2 sound words 

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PDF K Sample - Scroll to Week 11 - 2 sound words 

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The Heggerty’s Phonemic Awareness Curriculum is easier to implement than ever before. This ESSA rated solution provides embedded professional development, explicit teacher guidance, and systematic lesson instruction in both English and Spanish for preschool, kindergarten, and primary classrooms.

The lessons take just ten minutes to complete and are guaranteed to fit seamlessly into current literacy instruction.

Overview:
35 weeks of lessons

10 skill components in each lesson

Grade level:
Kindergarten

Setting:
Whole group instruction lessons can be used in small groups to provide intervention and support for Kindergarten students who need additional support with targeted skills instruction.

Lesson length:
10 minutes

The Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Kindergarten lessons are designed to supplement your existing literacy curriculum and easily integrate into half-day or full-day kindergarten programs. When lessons are taught daily, teachers see improvement in students’ reading, spelling, and writing as the students learn to hear the sounds in words.

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Watch this skilled teacher give Heggerty lesson examples.

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Kindergarten Heggerty Lessons- Blue Book

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Daily lessons from the Kindergarten Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Curriculum

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Notice the sound work, which requires listening and responses from the students. In this preview lesson of the Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Curriculum for Kindergarten, watch as Director of Curriculum Marjorie Bottari guides these students through Week 19, Day 3. This video provides a real-life classroom example of how the curriculum is implemented and how it helps young learners develop phonemic awareness skills.

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Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Preview Lesson- Kindergarten, Week 19, Day 3

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Pages 57-64 Includes how to administer PSF with fidelity, and scenarios you may encounter.

Note the discontinue rule for PSF in general (5 in a row 0) and the beginning kindergarten discontinue rule:

DIBELS 8 Adminstration and Scoring Guide

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Read pages 47-49 to be sure you are giving credit to students who may have accents when they speak specific vowels and language patterns.

DIBELS 8 Adminstration and Scoring Guide

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Progress Monitoring (Weekly) PDF and Chart: dibelsnext_progmon_psf_scoring.pdf

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Research indicates that the most critical phonemic awareness skills are blending and segmenting, since they are most closely associated with early reading and writing growth and are implicated in the decoding process (NICHHD, 2000). The Instructional Routines Handbook in Wonders includes research-based routines for blending, segmentation, and other tasks to support development of these skills.

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Wonders Phonemic Awareness lessons in the Teacher’s Editions teach children to blend and segment phonemes as well as to isolate, identify, categorize, add, delete, substitute, and reverse phonemes.

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Research PDF: na-2023-wonders-k-5-foundational-skills-approach.pdf

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Wonders has a scope and sequence. Look to columns 8-9 under "Phonemic Awareness" and "Phonics." These activities support PSF skills.

Scope and sequence PDF:

20143_Wonders23_Scope-Sequences_GK_D01_final.indd

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Optional Read - Phonemic Segmentation Fluency Improvements

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Optional Read - Phonemic Segmentation Fluency Improvements

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Page 14: In DIBELS 8th Edition, PSF accounts for both word frequency and the number of phonemes in a word. All forms draw only from the 2,500 most frequent words in English (Balota et al., 2007) to minimize vocabulary familiarity from interfering with student performance. In addition, to better control differences in difficulty between forms, consistent rules are used in both grades regarding where less frequent words can appear on the forms. Moreover, spelling patterns are ordered in terms of the number of phonemes, proceeding from two phoneme words to words with progressively more phonemes.

In kindergarten, the first 20% of items have two phonemes, while the remaining 80% have three phonemes. In this way, PSF now avoids the distinct floor effects (i.e., many students scoring zero) in kindergarten that have plagued previous versions and, thus, eliminates the need for a separate measure of initial sound fluency. In first grade, the progression in difficulty is a bit more rapid, with the first 13% of items having two phonemes and then increasing in phonemes with additional increases after every eight items.

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Phonemic Segmentation Fluency (PSF) is a standardized, individually-administered measure of phonological awareness. PSF is administered to students in the fall of kindergarten through the spring of first grade.

PSF assesses a student’s ability to fluently segment two- to six-phoneme words into their individual phonemes. Kindergarten is just 2-3 phonemes. In PSF, the examiner orally presents a series of words and asks the student to verbally produce the individual phonemes for each word.

For example, if the examiner said “sat,” and the student said “/s/ /a/ /t/", the student would receive three points for the word. After each response, the examiner presents the next word. Students are given 1 minute to segment the words into phonemes.

Kindergarten:

20% - words with 2 sounds (13% for first grade)

us = /u/ /s/

80% - words with 3 sounds (87% 3+ sounds)

fun = /f/ /u/ /n/

nest = /n/ /e/ /s/ /t/

BOY - MOY - EOY

Student Performance Measure via Observation 👁️

Directions for Scoring and Rules PDF: psf-all-scoring-practice-materials.pdf

Scoring Video: Scoring Practice – Phoneme Segmentation Fluency (PSF) | DIBELS®

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Phonological sensitivity developed using oral language (such as syllable awareness, sensitivity to rhyming, awareness of alliteration, and awareness of onsite-rimes in spoken words) is an important part of emergent literacy skills for young children (ages 4-5) in preK and beginning kindergarten. They are precursors to phonemic awareness, which is the phonological task most related to learning to read and spell words in any alphabetic system (Ehri, 2004). Phonemic awareness is the ability to identify, blend, segment, and manipulate individual sounds (phonemes) in words. This post highlights the importance of developing phonemic awareness using activities that include letters.

Collectively, the skills listed above fall under the broader umbrella of phonological awareness. Adams and colleagues pointed out over 25 year ago the following about phonemic awareness:
Before children can make any sense of the alphabetic principle, they must understand that those sounds that are paired with the letters are one and the same as the sounds of speech... research shows that the very notion that spoken language is made up of sequences of these little sounds does not come naturally or easily to human beings. Fortunately, many of the activities involving rhyme, rhythm, listening, and sounds that have long been enjoyed with preschool-age children are ideally suited for this purpose. Adams et al., 1998
It is important to emphasize that while activities designed to develop phonological sensitivity can be done with young children without seeing letters, once students are taught letter naming and begin learning how sounds and letters correspond (in kindergarten and grade 1), instruction should focus on identifying, blending, and segmenting individual sounds in written words using letters.

The Alphabetic Principle, Phonemic Awareness, and Phonics

The alphabetic principle is the concept that letters and letter patterns represent the sounds of a spoken language. When students understand the alphabetic principle, they have graphophonemic awareness. They must have this understanding in order to learn decoding and spelling skills because written English uses an alphabetic system.

Phonics instruction helps students use the alphabetic principle to learn the relationships between the letters of written language and the sounds of spoken language. Phonics instruction teaches how the 26 individual letters and letter combinations (graphemes) represent the 44 sounds (phonemes) in the English language. Learning that there are predictable relationships between sounds and letters allows students to apply these relationships to both familiar and unfamiliar words and to begin to read with fluency.

Once students are seeing letters in words as they blend, segment, or manipulate spoken phonemes, these tasks should be completed using letters. This approach has not always been widely embraced, as explained by the International Dyslexia Association (2022):
Based on earlier research findings, "over the years an assumption was widely accepted by researchers - and implemented by practitioners - that instruction should follow a sequence from larger to smaller phonological elements. However, research has confirmed that phoneme awareness can be taught to children who lack phonological sensitivity, demonstrating that acquiring phoneme awareness does not require students to first gain syllable segmentation skills. Multiple findings also corroborate that programs are effective when they begin with a focus on phoneme awareness rather than phonological sensitivity, and highly so when instruction then links phonemes with graphemes. This is documented both for beginning readers and for students who have struggled with acquiring reading skills. This research indicates that phonological sensitivity instruction (with larger units such as rhyme, syllables, and onset-rime) is neither a prerequisite nor a causal factor in the development of phonemic awareness."
A Reciprocal Relationship

Phonemic awareness facilitates the alphabetic principle, and phonemic awareness is enhanced as students learn phonics. Dr. Tim Shanahan made the following points about this reciprocal relationship in his 2020 blog post Letters in Phonemic Awareness Instruction or the Reciprocal Nature of Learning to Read.
"Many educators tout the idea that phonemic awareness is an auditory skill and that it, therefore, must be learned auditorily. .... The reason I say that it makes more sense to teach phonemic awareness with letters than without is because research shows that instructional routines that do that end up with greater success (NICHD, 2000).... Foundational skills help readers to progress with higher level ones. That means phonemic awareness facilitates decoding and spelling. However, trying to apply phonemic awareness within decoding and spelling refines and extends that ability."
He goes on to explain the reciprocal nature of reading skill development, where foundational skills support a more higher skill, and a higher skill supports the lower one, citing Perfetti and Beck's quote, "Phonemic knowledge and learning to read are reciprocal."

Phonemic Awareness Using Letters: Connections to Research

While oral-only phonemic awareness instruction can positively affect word-level reading and spelling abilities, phonemic awareness instruction using letters is more more effective.

One of the most well-established findings in beginning reading research is the important relationship between phonemic awareness and reading acquisition. The research guide Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade (Foorman et. al., 2016) recommends teaching students to recognize and manipulate sounds in speech, teaching students letter-sound relations, and using word-building and other activities to link students' knowledge of letter-sound relationships with phonemic awareness. The report notes:
The National Reading Panel (NRP) report found that teaching students to recognize and manipulate the segments of sound in words (also referred to as phonological awareness) and to link those sounds to letters is necessary to prepare them to read words and comprehend text. Recent evidence reviewed for this guide supports the NRP's conclusion. To effectively decode (convert from print to speech) and encode (convert from speech to print) words, students must be able to identify the individual sounds, or phonemes, that make up the words they hear in speech. Teachers should begin the instruction described in this recommendation as soon as possible. These activities support students in breaking down the sounds within spoken language and then mapping individual sounds to printed letters. p. 14
A more recent study by Erbeli, Rice, Xu, Bishop and Goodrich (2024) found that phonemic awareness instruction with letters led to bigger returns than activities practiced orally only. The authors of a 2021 article (Clements et al.), based on a review of the research related to phonemic awareness instruction, concluded that while phonemic awareness is an important part of beginning instruction, especially when integrated with print, advanced phonemic awareness focused on phoneme manipulation without using print is not effective. The authors further conclude that time spent with the latter may use up valuable instructional time that could be spent on beginning reading instruction.

Instructional Suggestions

Phonemic awareness tasks range from simple to complex. The easiest task is simply identifying and isolating a phoneme within a spoken word. Blending and segmenting are the tasks most tied to decoding and spelling words. Adding, deleting, and substituting are manipulation tasks, the most challenging. Students who are readily able to manipulate phonemes likely do not have difficulty with phonemic awareness. On the other hand, some students will be able to learn phonics and read even if they have difficulty with phoneme manipulation tasks. For most students, proficiency with blending and segmenting is sufficient for learning to read. Therefore, teachers should not assume that students must become proficient with phoneme manipulation before they can participate in phonics instruction.

Here are some suggestions for blending and segmenting phonemes in words using letters (from the Keys to Beginning Reading teacher training course):

Blending sounds in a word is critical to learning to read because fluid blending helps students produce recognizable words. Segmenting sounds in a word is critical to learning to spell.

Once students have established a few letter-sound correspondences (a few consonants and a few short vowels), they can blend them together to read words (decode) and segment to encode (spell) words.

Students need explicit instruction and practice to the point of automaticity with blending and segmenting the individual sounds of letters in words without stopping between them. The goal is "sounding out" with a fast pronunciation of a word.

Begin with blending words that have continuant consonant sounds as the first sound (f, l, m, n, s) because they are easier for students to blend.

Provide guided practice and immediate feedback, following a gradual release I do it, We do it, You do it approach.

Remember to model correct pronunciation of the individual sounds during blending and segmenting activities.

Incorporate multisensory strategies such as moving letter tiles while blending.

References

Adams, M.J., Foorman, B.R., Lundberg, I., & Beeler, T. (1998). Phonemic Awareness in Young Children. Paul H. Brookes.

Clemens, N., Solari, E., Kearns, D. M., Fien, H., Nelson, N. J., Stelega, M., ... Heoft, F. (2021). They Say You Can Do Phonemic Awareness Instruction "In the Dark", But Should You? A Critical Evaluation of the Trend Toward Advanced Phonemic Awareness Training. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/ajxbv

Ehri, L.C. (2004). Teaching Phonemic Awareness and Phonics: An Explanation of the National Reading Panel Meta-Analysis. In P. McCardle & V Chabra (Eds.). The Voice of Evidence in Reading Research. Paul H. Brookes.

Erbeli, F., Rice, M., Xu, Y., Bishop, M.E., & Goodrich, J.M. (2024) A Meta-Analysis on the Optimal Cumulative Dosage of Early Phonemic Awareness Instruction, Scientific Studies of Reading, DOI: 10.1080/10888438.2024.2309386

Foorman, B., Beyler, N., Borradaile, K., Coyne, M., Denton, C. A., Dimino, J., Furgeson, J., Hayes, L., Henke, J., Justice, L., Keating, B., Lewis, W., Sattar, S., Streke, A., Wagner, R., & Wissel, S. (2016). Foundational skills to support reading for understanding in kindergarten through 3rd grade (NCEE 2016-4008). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE), Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education.

International Dyselxia Association. (2022) Building Phoneme Awareness: Know What Matters

National Reading Panel. (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel. Bethesda, MD: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Shanahan, T. (2020). Letters in Phonemic Awareness Instruction or the Reciprocal Nature of Learning to Read. (Shanahan on Literacy)

Related, Supplemental Resources

Joan Sedita

Joan Sedita is the founder of Keys to Literacy and author of the Keys to Literacy professional development programs. She is an experienced educator, nationally recognized speaker and teacher trainer. She has worked for over 35 years in the literacy education field and has presented to thousands of teachers and related professionals at schools, colleges, clinics, and professional conferences.

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Developing Phonemic Awareness Using Letters - Keys to Literacy

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Phonological sensitivity developed using oral language (such as syllable awareness, sensitivity to rhyming, awareness of alliteration, and awareness of onsite-rimes in spoken words) is an important part of emergent literacy skills for young children (ages 4-5) in preK and beginning kindergarten.