Research has shown that phonemic awareness is the *most important* phonological awareness skill kids learn because it depends on individual sounds in words – a skill students need in order to successfully connect those sounds to the letters used to spell them.
With brand new readers, you can practice phonemic awareness just with spoken language like this:
“Swap /m/ in MUG for /r/. What’s the new word?”
Answer: RUG
But when kids have learned letter sounds, you can practice phonemic awareness by swapping out just one letter at a time.
Here are four simple ways to do just that:
1️⃣ SWAP BEGINNING SOUNDS
Sun — fun— bun — run
2️⃣ SWAP ENDING SOUNDS
Run— rub— rut
3️⃣ SWAP MIDDLE SOUNDS
Rut— rat— rot— rut
4️⃣ MIX IT UP
Rut— hut— hit— him
PRO TEACHING TIP: Students’ brains learn to hear the individual sounds at the beginning of words first, then at the end of words, and finally (with lots of practice!) in the middle of words, so I recommend practicing phoneme swapping in the order I described the 4 options above and building up slowly as kids have success.❤️
👉 Save this so you can quickly find it again later!
#phonemicawareness #scienceofreading
