My last article began giving more details on phonemic awareness instruction. It listed some activities that primary level teachers may use in order to help students gain certain concepts. I will continue to name educational and fun activities for children in this article and go into more detail about teaching children phonemic awareness skills.
Phoneme Deletion: In this activity students are asked to say a word without a particular sound. It is usually helpful if the children say the word first then omit the sound. For example the teacher will instruct the students to say rose first then say it without the r.
Phoneme Addition: This is the opposite of Phoneme Deletion. In this activity students add a sound to a word. The teacher may ask the students to say mile then add an s to the beginning to make a new word.
Phoneme Substitution: In this activity students replace one sound with another sound. For example the teacher will ask students to say hop then change the /h/ to /t/ to make top.
In addition to understanding some activities that contribute to better phonemic awareness there are also some terms that may be helpful to know.
Phoneme Manipulation: The activities listed above are phoneme manipulation activities. In these activities the children manipulate the sounds in the various words.
Blending: Blending is the combination of phoneme to make words. This may include combining onsets and rimes too.
Segmentation: Segmentation is the separation of words into phonemes, syllables, onsets and rimes.
Phonemic awareness instruction can help younger students who are learning to read or older students who struggle to read. It can also help students learn to spell.
Phoneme blending and segmentation instruction often show the greatest results in student achievement.
Phonemic awareness instruction should be short intervals. In fact it is suggested that over the span of the entire school year, the phonemic awareness instruction should only consume about twenty hours.