Teaching Phonemic Awareness, Letter Knowledge, and Concepts of Print

Phoneme awareness and letter-sound knowledge account for more of the variation in early reading and spelling success than general intelligence, overall maturity level, or listening comprehension. They are the basis for learning an alphabetic writing system.

Children who have poorly developed phonemic awareness at the end of kindergarten are likely to become poor readers. Explicit instruction in sound identification, matching, segmentation, and blending, when linked appropriately to sound-symbol association, reduces the risk of reading failure and accelerates early reading and spelling acquisition for all children.

Teaching these skills well, however, is not as easy as it might seem. Teachers must themselves be aware of speech sounds and how they differ from letters in order to help students acquire awareness of phonemes and the symbols that represent them. There is growing evidence that many adults need explicit instruction about language before they themselves demonstrate the level of sound and spelling awareness needed to teach it well.

In addition, teachers need to understand the developmental progression from spoken word and syllable identification to blending and segmenting all the phonemes in simple words.

Finally, instruction in this domain begins with auditory-verbal exercises to direct children’s attention to sound, but phonemes should be linked with letters once children understand that letters represent segments of their own speech. At that point, phoneme awareness becomes part of a well-designed reading or spelling lesson.