Phonological awareness is an umbrella term for a wide set of skills, one of which is phonemic awareness. Further information on ‘Phonological Awareness’ can be found in section 1 of the resource.

It is important to mention that children will grasp different aspects of phonological awareness at different times and may need to revisit and build upon some aspects as they learn to read. The progression of phonological skills is not linear, and children will continue to develop phonological awareness throughout and beyond early level.

Phonemic awareness is defined as the ability to notice, think about, and work with the individual sounds in spoken words. (Armbruster, Lehr & Osborn, 2006).

Phonemic awareness is the most complex level of phonological awareness because it involves identifying and manipulating the individual sounds, also known as phonemes, in words (International Literacy Association, 2019).

Children demonstrate phonemic awareness through tasks of varying complexity. These range from the simplest

• isolating and identifying sounds, e.g. cat begins with a c
• categorising sounds, e.g. cat and cot begin with the same sound
• blending sounds to form words – c -a -t – cat

to the more advanced skills of

• segmenting words into sounds – segment the word cat into the sounds c-a-t
• and finally, manipulating sounds in words by adding, deleting or substituting sounds.

(Armbruster, Lehr & Osborn, 2006).

In order to decode unfamiliar words, learners need to break down words into sounds. Phonemic awareness is therefore key to reading development.

The National Reading Panel’s review (2000) found that phonemic awareness taught with letters helped readers at various stages acquire phonemic awareness better than instruction without letters.

There is a reciprocal relationship between phonemic awareness and decoding words, meaning each one supports the other. Kilpatrick (2015) explains ‘As phonic decoding skills develop...it appears to directly promote more advanced phonemic awareness’. Developing decoding through interaction with letters and their corresponding sounds improves or ‘fine tunes’ phonemic awareness.

Developing phonemic awareness can be modelled through day to day exploration of words as well as some more structured experiences.

As previously mentioned, phonemic skills can be split into:

• isolating, identifying and categorising sounds,
• blending and segmenting sounds,
• manipulating sounds.

Isolating, Identifying and Categorising Sounds

Educators should model these skills, thinking and talking aloud as they support children to isolate, identify and categorise sounds in words in stories or rhymes.

Where appropriate, we can introduce children to sounds and their corresponding letters as they arise in text.

Blending and Segmenting Sounds

Blending and segmenting are the opposite process to one another however they are both required for later reading and spelling. Blending is when children listen to a sequence of separately spoken phonemes and then by blending the sounds together, they form a word – for example – f-r-o-g – frog. Segmenting is the reverse of blending; a word is broken into its individual sounds, for example the word frog is segmented into f-r-o-g.

Blending and segmenting can be done orally with no print. However, you may wish to introduce print where you feel children are ready to make links between the sounds and their corresponding, and already familiar letters.

You might begin by the modelling of blending and segmenting words orally through daily interactions. For example, sounding out an individual word as part of a simple instruction or a puppet who only speaks to the children in sounds.

Manipulating Sounds

Phonemic manipulation involves deleting sounds, adding sounds or substituting sounds to make new words.

Phoneme deletion is when a child recognises the word which remains when a sound is removed. Phoneme addition is when a child makes a new word by adding a sound to an existing word. Phoneme substitution is when a child substitutes one sound for another to make a new word.

We can model these skills by manipulating words which are familiar to children, either from texts or words in their environment. You may wish to use letter cards or tiles to develop children’s skills in phonemic manipulation. Some children may find it useful to have a visual anchor when moving and manipulating sounds.

Phonemic awareness is key to reading development.

Buckingham, J. (2023). Need to know or nice to know … What is at the heart of the Science of Reading for teachers? Five from Five, p4.

National Reading Panel. (2000). Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction. [nih.gov]

Phonemic awareness supports the reader to decode text/to hear and identify the individual sounds in words.

Armbruster, B., Lehr, F., & Osborn, J. (2006). Put Reading First, Kindergarten Through Grade Three: The research building blocks for teaching children to read. National Institute for Literacy: The Partnership for Reading, pp.1, 4–5.

Bell, N. (2023). A Deep Dive into Phonemic Proficiency. Five by Five, p. 4.

Breadmore, H. L., Vardy, E. J., Cunningham, A. J., Kwok, R. K. W., & Carroll, J. M. (2019). Literacy Development: Evidence Review. Education Endowment Foundation, p. 42.

International Literacy Association. (2019). Phonological Awareness in Early Childhood Literacy Development (No. 9457), pp. 2–3.

Kilpatrick, D. A. (2015). Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties. John Wiley & Sons, p. 113.7.

National Reading Panel. (2000). Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction. [nih.gov], pp. 2–6.

Phonemic awareness should be developed by providing opportunities for learners to notice, think about and play with the individual sounds in spoken words and (where appropriate) print. 

Armbruster, B., Lehr, F., & Osborn, J. (2006). Put Reading First, Kindergarten Through Grade Three: The research building blocks for teaching children to read. National Institute for Literacy: The Partnership for Reading, pp. 4–5.