The Science of Reading: Phonemic and Phonological Awareness

Reading has the wondrous power to transport us across time and space. It enhances our imagination, sparks our creativity, and helps us see others’ perspectives. The stories and characters we meet within the pages of books teach us about our world, ourselves, and others. Reading also nurtures skills like: improved vocabulary, greater concentration and memory, and increased cognitive development. Reading is truly extraordinary!

Every child deserves to learn to read. As post-pandemic reading success has declined across the United States, more schools are embracing The Science of Reading, a body of research and scientific evidence based on five main pillars, help us understand how children learn to read. 

In this blog series, we will look at these pillars. The first one we’ll discuss is Phonemic Awareness. This is a foundational literacy skill, and falls under the umbrella of the larger skill of Phonological Awareness, which is developed only through listening and speaking, not yet through written words. 

By first laying a foundation with word sounds, students are more prepared to excel in more complex reading skills.

Phonological and Phonemic Awareness both involve identifying and manipulating word sounds. Both are crucial precursor skills to fluent reading and comprehension. 

Phonemic Awareness is a part of Phonological Awareness. It is considered the most complex and nuanced skill within the Phonological Awareness Continuum. Phonemic Awareness refers specifically to understanding and manipulating individual word sounds, called phonemes, whereas Phonological Awareness skills incorporate both working with phonemes and larger, chunked word sounds.

For example: Separating the word “cat“ into the sounds /c/ /at/ is an example of onset and rime, which is a Phonological Awareness skill.

Separating the word “cat” into the sounds /c/ /a/ /t/ is an example of segmentation, a Phonemic Awareness skill.

Phonological Awareness is a crucial prerequisite for literacy. Research shows that children with a firm grasp of Phonological Awareness are highly likely to become successful readers. Most poor readers have more difficulty with phonological skills than other reading skills. Strong phonological skills lead to stronger alphabetic skills. When explicit phonological skill instruction is in place, along with systematic phonics instruction, their learning scaffold becomes more sturdy! A solid understanding of Phonological Awareness is a critical first step toward confident and successful reading.

Phonological Awareness can be broken down into a continuum of six skills:

1. Rhyming
2. Alliteration
3. Sentence segmentation 
4. Syllable awareness
5. Onset and Rime
6. Phonemic Awareness

The continuum is often depicted as a staircase because each skill builds on the last.

Learning to rhyme is an essential starting skill for future readers. Rhyming helps students discriminate between word sounds and begin to recognize common phonemes. 

Songs and poems are great resources for developing rhyming skills because their predictable patterns help children recognize rhythm and commonalities in word sounds. 

Here is a simple rhyming exercise you can practice with your students: 

1. Choose a Consonant-Vowel-Consonant (CVC) word like “hat.”
2. Choose another CVC word with the same ending sound, like “bat.”
3. Clearly enunciate the two words, especially the ending sound, for your class. Ask, “Do these words end with the same sound?”
4. Repeat with other rhyming CVC words. Also, practice with words that don’t rhyme, like “hat” and “pet.” Practice is key! Eventually, your students will be able to come up with rhyming words on their own.

Whereas rhyming exercises help students identify word-ending sounds, alliteration exercises help students recognize beginning sounds. 

Alliteration introduces students to first-sound isolation, a crucial step toward Phonemic Awareness. 

Here is an exercise you can use to practice alliteration: 

1. Clearly enunciate the beginning “S” sound as you read this sentence to your students: “Silly snakes eat salad, soup, and strawberries.”
2. Ask, “What sound do you keep hearing?” If your students get stuck, prompt them with the “S” sound. 
3. Clearly enunciate each beginning sound as you read, “If Silly snakes eat salad, soup, and strawberries, will they eat salsa or lettuce?” The correct answer is “salsa” because it starts with the same “S” sound. 
4. Repeat with other alliterative sentences.

Sentence segmentation is when students separate sentences into individual words. This skill is especially important for learning to read and write in sentences and is also a precursor skill to breaking words down into syllables and phonemes. 

To practice sentence segmentation, work on counting individual words in a sentence. 

Here is an example of how you can practice sentence segmentation with your students: 

1. Begin with a simple four-word sentence. For example: “I see a cat.” 
2. Have four students stand up. Walk from student to student saying: “I” (first student), “see” (second student), “a” (third student), “cat (fourth student), segmenting each word in the sentence.
3. Then, ask questions like, “How many words are in our sentence? Who was the second word? Who was the last word? What is our sentence about?”

You can also use blending/segmenting boards with counters or blocks to segment sounds, words, rimes, word families, etc in words and sentences.

Syllable awareness is about breaking words into smaller parts based on the individual sounds they contain. Syllables help students learn how word parts come together to make whole words. 

Two-syllable compound words are a great way to introduce syllables. Children can hear the individual words and see how they combine to create a new word. 

To practice syllable awareness with compound words, try this exercise: 

1. Practice saying a compound word like “raincoat” together as a class. 
2. Clap when you hear each syllable.
3. Ask your students to separate the word into two words: “Raincoat” becomes “rain” and “coat.” 
4. Repeat and clap to the one-syllable words: “Rain” and “coat.”

Practicing with onset and rime will help students identify the phonological parts of words. The onset is the initial consonant sound of a word, and the rime is the first vowel and all following consonant sounds. In the word “star,” the onset is /st/ and the rime is /ar/. 

Onset and rime will help students break words into smaller sound units and prepare them to identify every phoneme in a word. Onset and rime also helps students look for common patterns in words. This is a great way to introduce word families! 

Use this exercise to practice onset and rime: 

1. Choose a CVC word with a simple onset and rime like “sun.”
2. Hold out your arm
3. Touch your shoulder with your other arm and say the onset: /s/
4. Slide your hand down your arm as you say the rime: /un/ 
5. Practice doing this multiple times with your students. The motion will help model how they blend the word sounds to make “sun.”
6. Ask the students, “What word do you hear?” 
7. Repeat multiple times with the same word until students can quickly identify and blend the sounds.

Phonemic Awareness is the most complex skill within the Phonological Awareness continuum. It is all about identifying and manipulating individual phonemes. Before tackling phonemes, students must be proficient in precursory skills that help them identify larger word sounds, like rhyming, alliteration, sentence and syllable segmentation, and onset and rime. 

Phonemic Awareness is so complex that it is often depicted with its own continuum of skills. Like in the Phonological Awareness Continuum, these skills build on each other and gradually increase in difficulty.

Isolation has to do with identifying individual phonemes within a word. An example of isolation is identifying /t/ as the final sound in the word “mat.”

Blending is when isolated sounds are combined to make words. Combining the sounds /p/ /o/ /t/ together to say “pot” is blending. 

Segmentation is the division of words into individual phonemes. An example of segmentation is splitting the word “Hat” into the sounds: /H/ /a/ /t/. 

Addition is adding phonemes to make new words, like adding /s/ to “top” to make “stop.”

Deletion is removing phonemes to make new words, like removing /s/ from “sat” to make “at.”

Substitution is changing phonemes to other phonemes to make new words. For example, changing the /c/ in “cat” to a /b/ makes “bat.” 

Reading is a crucial skill that helps our young learners become informed, educated, and empowered adults. The path to fluent reading begins even before words are written on paper. Phonological and Phonemic Awareness help students identify and work with the individual letter and word sounds that make up our language. Starting with individual letter and word sounds better equips them for phonics, decoding, and fluency. 

References

Explicitly Teach Rhyming. Reading Universe.

Friend, A., & Olson, R. K. Phonological spelling and reading deficits in children with spelling disabilities. Scientific Studies of Reading, 12(1), 90–105.

How we learn to read: The critical role of Phonological Awareness. National Center on Improving Literacy.

Moats, L., & Tolman, C. Why phonological awareness is important for reading and spelling. Reading Rockets.

An overview of onset-rime. Reading Universe.

Phonemic Awareness Assessment. Reading Rockets.

Phonological & Phonemic Awareness. National Center on Improving Literacy.

Phonological and phonemic awareness: Introduction. Reading Rockets.

Reasons reading is so important for student success. Merrimack College. 

Phonological awareness: The sounds of reading. Institute of Education Sciences.

A step-by-step guide on how to teach syllable awareness. Early Learning Ideas. 

Thomas, C. Onset Rime Strategies — PreK/Kindergarten.

Unraveling the differences: Phonological awareness vs. phonics. Voyager Sopris Learning.