What is Phonemic Awareness?

Q: Why do some children learn to read so easily, while others struggle?

A: Thirty years of research funded by the National Institutes of Health has found:

               Successful children have a special ‘sound foundation.’
               They can play with speech sounds in their ‘Mind’s Ear.'

Phonemic awareness is the ability to notice, think about, and work with the individual sounds in spoken words. An example of how beginning readers show us they have phonemic awareness is combining or blending the separate sounds of a word to say the word ("/c/ /a/ /t/ - cat.") Research has shown that phonemic awareness is the greatest predictor of reading success.

Great Resources for parents:

• PBS Kids - online games
• The Reading Treehouse - activities
• Reading Rockets - short video