Phonemic Awareness

1. Who’s in My Word?


Source: (Reading Rockets, 2018)


Explanation: This activity starts with two columns of rhyming words. Each column should

have a different rhyme. Each student should have a letter card. The teacher then say “if your

letter makes the ___ sound come up” until the word is spelled. All students can then work

together to blend the sounds and sound out the word that was spelled. This activity allows

students to build phonemic awareness by listening for the phoneme and then comparing the

sound to the letter on their card to see if they match. If they do, the student knows to stand up

and if they don’t the child knows they have a letter that makes a different sound. Another

way this activity could be played is to have the teacher say the word for example, “if you

think your letter is in the word bat come up.” The teacher could then ask each of the students

to explain their thinking as to why they believe their letter is in the word. When the child is

able to explain that

they have the letter

that makes ___

sound, it is clear

that the child has

some level of

phonemic

awareness.

2. Rhyming Field Trip


Source: (Reading Rockets, 2018)


Explanation: Explain to students that you’re going to take a (pretend) field trip to the

carnival. Discuss the first sound of carnival with students and introduce the idea that

everyone must bring something that starts with that same sound. Everyone starts by saying

carnival, then the first person to go would say what they are going to bring, “carnival cake.”

Then it is the next students turn. This person would say something along the lines of

“carnival, crocs” and the pattern would continue. This is a fun activity to challenge students

to think of words that start with the same sound as carnival, or wherever you choose to take

your trip. Students that go near the end may have a hard time coming up with an answer but

encourage them to brainstorm many ideas as the game goes on, Students are able to practice

phonemic awareness through focusing in on the idea that each word given must start with the

same beginning sound as carnival. 


3. Phoneme Chips


Source: (Reading Rockets, 2018).


Explanation: Students begin this strategy by sitting on the floor or at their desks. Each

student receives 5 blocks. The teacher should model the thinking and completion of hearing

a word said aloud, saying it back to yourself and then finally having enough information to

count out the appropriate number of chips to mach each of the sounds within the word.

Assigning a chip for each sound forces children to slow down the word and hear the physical

sounds that are being blended together as it is said. It is important for students to practice this
 skill because it provides them with the opportunity to hear different blends or diphthongs and

realize that although there are two letters contributing to the sound, it is only one sound.

Another variation of this activity is to use bracelets with beads and have students move the

beads as they hear the different sounds within words.


4. Simon Says Sounds


Source: (Aylin, 2014)


Explanation: For this activity, students work in pairs although each student needs their own
set of alphabet cards. The teacher is Simon and gives commands such as “Simon says put the

/t/ card on the ground” “Simon says touch the /m/ card with your thumb” or “Simon says

place the /f/ card on your left shoe” This game is added practice for students to practice

identifying which letters make which sounds. To make this game easier for younger students,

allow them to make a few errors before they get out. For example, if young students do

something with the k card even though the /c/ sound was called, they should not be out.

Through playing, students are able to learn in a fun way that also allows them to improve

their phonemic awareness. Another way this game could be played is by having the teacher

give the directions by saying the sound of the phonemes. For example, “Simon says raise

your /h/ /an/ /d/.” Students would then have to blend the phonemes to realize they are

supposed to raise their hand.


5. Use Words You Know


Source: (Serravallo, 2015).


Explanation: Use words you know encourages students to build on their prior knowledge of

vocabulary to help them figure out what sounds they could use in order to change the word

to something they need. For example, If a student knows how to spell the word fun the

teacher can ask “how could you change fun into run? What sound do you need in the

beginning? How do you think you could you achieve that?” This strategy combines prior

knowledge as well as working with phonemes because students have to consider which

sounds are the same between both words and need to be carried over as well as which sounds

within the word need to be changed in order to achieve the proper word. 


6. Take a Sound Away


Source: (Adams, Foorman, Lundber, Bleer, N.D.)


Explanation: For this activity, students should be seated in a circle. The teacher begins by

expelling to students that sometimes, when a sound is taken away from a word. The teacher

should ask students to echo and say “f-f-f-ear” then say “ear.” The teacher can then ask,

“what sound did we take away?” Students should answer /f/. This activity can be continued

using words such as rice, scat, pants, ham, harm etc. As the class moves through different

words, students should be asked to use the firs word in a sentence and then the word that was

produced after the initial phoneme deletion in a sentence as well. This allows students to

really hear how the word changed as well as the meaning. Once students are comfortable

with this the teacher can call them back to their seats through deleting the first phoneme of
 their name. So a student named Abby would return to her seat when “Bby” is called and a

student named Simon would return to his seat when “imon” is called. This allows students to

recognize their name with the deletion of the initial phoneme and to see that when this

happens, it changes the sound and the meaning of the word. This activity could also be used

to add phonemes through using words like “ox” and adding the /f/ sound,


7. Phoneme Point


Source: (Adams, Foorman, Lundber, Bleer, N.D.)


Explanation: Students have different colored blocks in front of them. One student pulls a
 card of a two phoneme word and reads it to the teacher. Examples include bed, rat, tree,

drum, bow, sock, pen, ran, etc. After the student reads the word to the teacher, the teacher

should repeat the word, pausing slightly between the two phonemes. Students should then

echo the teacher. Next, the teacher should demonstrate placing the blocks under the phoneme

and pointing to the different colored box representing each phoneme. Students should also

mirror this. This allows students to kinesthetically point to two separate blocks while saying

the two different sounds in the word to then realize that the particular word has two

phonemes or two different sounds. This activity could be made more difficult by giving

students multiple blocks and having them determine how many they need to place in front of

them, thus determining how many phonemes are in the word. Furthermore, the game can be

reversed by not displaying the picture card and only revealing the phonemes. Students then

point to the blocks repeating the phonemes and can raise their hand when they think they

have blended the phonemes to create the word.


8. Troll Talk 


Source: (Adams, Foorman, Lundber, Bleer, N.D.)


Explanation: This strategy is a fun way for students to work with phoneme blending. To start,

the teacher says to students, “Once upon a time, there was a kind, little troll who loved to

give people presents. The only catch was that the troll always wanted people to know what

their present was before giving it to them. The problem was that the little troll had a very

strange way of talking. If he was going to tell a child that the present was a bike, he would

say "b–i–k." Not until the child has guessed what the present was would he be completely
 happy. Now I will pretend to be the troll. I will name a surprise for one person at a time. If

you figure out someones present before they do, keep it in your head so you don’t ruin the

surprise. Possible presents include pan, dog, dress, bean, book, brick, ice, skate, shoe, phone,

truck, stool, soap etc. By guessing what their present is, students have the opportunity to

blend phoneme sounds and learn that different sounds can be blended together to make

words. This also allows teachers to work with students one at a time to ensure each student

understands how to blend phonemes.


9. Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down


Source: (Smith, 2016)


Explanation: Thumbs up, thumbs down is an activity that can take place anywhere

throughout the school day. Such as when the class is waiting to enter the cafeteria or art

room. For this activity, the teacher explains to students that they will be listening for word

pairs with the same initial, or beginning, sound. If they think the pair has the same initial

sound, they give a thumbs up. If the words do not have the same beginning sound, they give

a thumbs down. Pairs of words could include: map/nap, man/mop, car/bus etc. This game

allows students to listen and isolate the beginning phoneme of a word and then think and

decide if they are the same. This game could also be used to identify ending sounds or

rhyming words as well. Allowing students to quickly review this idea that phonemes are

small sounds that combine to make bigger words is efficient and more productive than

simply standing doing nothing. It is also likely that through the initial activity in dealing with

the initial sounds, students will say that words with beginning sounds rhyme although this is
 untrue. This activity can show students that just because a word has the same beginning

sound does not mean that it rhymes.

10. What Changed?


Source: (Jurey, 2013)


Explanation: This activity is for students that are more advanced and have a good

understanding of phonemic awareness. It starts out similar to the phoneme point activity

where the teacher says a word, for example she, and the student places two cubes together of

two different colors to represent the sounds sh and ee. The teacher would then say if that

block combination is she show me shy. The student would then have to remove the block

that represented ee and replace it with a block to represent /y/. This allows the student to

demonstrate the idea that the beginning phoneme of sh is staying the same and it is the

ending phoneme that is changing. In the beginning, words should be stretched so students

can hear the variety of different phonemes within each word. As the activity progresses, and

to make it more difficult, the teacher can stretch the words less and less as they feel it is

appropriate for their students. This strategy allows students to process all of the sounds in the

word and then consider which one needs to be changed. This also allows students to begin to

see word relationships and how the sound in different words are both similar and different.