How To: Teach Phonemic Awareness
- Jackie K.
- Jul 28
- 4 min read
Updated: Jul 28
Lesson Objective: Segment, blend, and manipulate phonemes
Grouping: Small-group or 1:1
Methodology: Based on PAST data, target student phonemic awareness needs from onset-rime to advanced.
Duration: 3-5 minutes, multiple times a week based on need
/Ph/ /o/ /n/ /e/ /m/ /i/ /c/ /ə/ /w/ /air/ /n/ /e/ /s/
Phonemic awareness, the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate individual sounds in spoken words, is essential for fluent reading. Yet it has long been overlooked in literacy instruction, despite overwhelming evidence of its importance. Fortunately, with the rise of the Science of Reading movement, that’s beginning to change.
Research consistently shows that phonemic awareness is one of the strongest predictors of later reading success. Without this skill, students often read slowly and inaccurately, which in turn affects their fluency and overall comprehension. Spelling also becomes difficult, as students struggle to segment or blend sounds effectively. For our remedial readers to make meaningful gains, they must receive explicit and targeted support in this area.
If you’re looking for a refresher on phonemic awareness, I highly recommend Equipped for Reading Success by David Kilpatrick. It’s a bit pricey, but well worth the investment. The appendices alone are goldmines—packed with lists and materials that save me hours of prep. I also appreciate that Kilpatrick’s activities to support orthographic mapping are age-neutral and universally appropriate.
Before beginning phonemic awareness instruction, I administer the Phonological Awareness Screening Test (PAST). Hard copies of the assessment are included in Kilpatrick’s Equipped for Reading Success, and electronic versions can be found here. With limited instructional time, it’s essential to identify each student’s exact phonemic skill level so I can target instruction appropriately. As described in my Goal-Setting post, I review the data individually with each student to foster ownership and ensure clarity on where we’re starting and why.
In the Onset-Rime Level, students practice manipulating and deleting onsets and rimes. At the Basic Phoneme Level, instruction targets the deletion and manipulation of individual phonemes—specifically initial phonemes within blends, ending phonemes, and final blends.
The Advanced Phoneme Level increases in complexity as students learn to substitute vowel phonemes, manipulate the second phoneme in initial blends, substitute final phonemes, and manipulate the penultimate phoneme in final blends. While that may sound like a mouthful in paragraph form, Equipped for Reading Success lays it out clearly and systematically. Below is a sample of a one-minute activity focused on deleting an ending sound. Each level includes at least eight word lists. I keep copies of these at hand for instruction.
Personally, I find phonemic awareness instruction more impactful one-on-one than in a small group. Most of my students begin at different skill levels and progress at different rates, making individualized instruction more effective. Since only one student can respond at a time during phonemic tasks, the time-on-task is essentially the same—three students for nine minutes or one student for three minutes. Working solo also creates space for personal check-ins and helps students who may feel insecure gain confidence in responding without the pressure of peers listening in.
🖍 How the Routine Works
So, what do I do with these word lists? Regardless of the level, my instructional routine stays consistent. I track every student response: a check mark for a correct and automatic answer (under three seconds), a tally mark for a correct but delayed response, and a dot for an incorrect one. In the sample below, I originally used one data sheet per period, thinking it would save time by avoiding the need to rifle through individual papers. But in practice, the trade-off wasn’t worth it. There wasn’t enough room for anecdotal notes, and I occasionally recorded data next to the wrong name. Now I use one page per student.
At the highest level of scaffolding, students use manipulatives to represent each sound. Any small object works, but I prefer two-sided counters. These are especially effective during manipulation tasks—students flip a counter to mark the sound being changed, which provides a helpful visual anchor. With younger grades, I used Elkonin, or sound boxes, on which to place the tokens, but I’ve found that’s not necessary with high schoolers. They already grasp the concept of one-to-one sound correspondence, so we can skip that scaffold. Instead, when reaching a brand-new level, I will tell them how many tokens are needed for each word.
Teaching compensators phonemic awareness can be more challenging than young, novice readers. This isn't surprising given that's it’s far more difficult to relearn how to do something than to learn it for the first time. Rewriting the brain is no easy feat. Many of my students are extremely hung up on the spelling of the word rather than the sounds they hear. At the beginning, it blows their mind that we don't necessarily have 1:1 correspondence between letters and sounds. I frequently have to remind students to stop visualizing the spelling of the word and instead focus on visualizing the sounds. This shift in thinking can be slow at first. But with consistent practice, they begin to make the connections. The growing pains are real—but so are the rewards. Once students master phonemic awareness, they experience noticeable gains in decoding, fluency, and spelling. The effort is absolutely worth it.
Some quick-links for you:
Equipped for Reading Success by David Kilpatrick
The PAST (okay that's funny, don't worry, that's not a time travel portal)
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