Define phonemic awareness and phonics. Consider their importance to reading efficacy. Explore instructional strategies that help K–12 students develop phonemic awareness and an understanding of phonics.

The Research Says: Stress Phonemic Awareness and Phonics

Reading instruction today emphasizes balance. Researchers and practitioners who survived the reading wars of the 1990s now agree that students must receive direct phonemic and phonics instruction, while also being given opportunities to read literature and other personally relevant, language-rich material.

Despite the importance of achieving such a balance, research strongly suggests that students who don't receive a solid grounding in phonics and phonemic awareness simply won't be as good at reading as they could be. Neuroscientist Sally Shaywitz points to a study of more than 300 children that showed that the level of phonologic awareness was directly linked to whether a child would be a good or a poor reader. Shaywitz, who is codirector of the Yale Center for the Study of Learning and Attention, adds that, although some children need phonics and phonemic instruction more than others, "all children can benefit from being taught directly how to break up spoken words into smaller units and how letters represent sounds" (D'Arcangelo, 1999, p. 29).

What children need to know is how the language system works.

—Sally Shaywitz, from The Brain and Reading, Tape 1: Making Connections, an ASCD video-based professional development program.

Two Separate Things

Teaching about phonemes is not phonics instruction, educators and researchers point out. Helping children develop phonemic awareness involves having them examine and manipulate phonemes — the smallest part of a spoken language. Helping children build their phonics knowledge involves having them identify the relationship between individual sounds (phonemes) and the letters (graphemes) of the written language (Tankersley, 2003). 

The distinction between the two becomes a bit more clear when we consider how to assess a student's phonemic awareness and understanding of phonics. "When educators assess phoneme awareness skills, they ask children to demonstrate knowledge of the sound structure of words without letters or written words present," explains G. Reid Lyon (1998, p. 15).

What word would be left if the b sound were taken away from bat?

"To assess phonics skills, children must link sounds (phonemes) with letters," Lyon continues (p. 15).

What letter of the alphabet makes the buh sound?

Although phonemic awareness and phonics skills are two distinct capacities, knowledge of both is indispensable to reading success. Furthermore, giving students opportunities to practice these skills with text is critical, Lyon asserts (1998).

The researchers have identified several basic, interconnected subskills that all children must master to become proficient readers.

—Marsha Berger, from Recent Research on Reading and Its Impact in the Classroom, an audio recording from ASCD's 2000 Annual Conference and Exhibit Show.

Strategies for Building Phonemic Awareness

Strategies for Building Phonics Skills

• Why Reading Is Not a Natural Process 
  Nearly four decades of scientific research on how children learn to read supports an emphasis on phoneme awareness and phonics in a literature-rich environment. These findings challenge the belief that children learn to read naturally.
• Describing the Picture Word Inductive Model
  This chapter from Emily F. Calhoun's book Teaching Beginning Reading and Writing with the Picture Word Inductive Model describes how the PWIM can be used to teach phonemic awareness, as well as spelling.

In this lesson, you explored strategies you can use to build phonemic awareness and phonics knowledge. Describe other effective strategies that can be used to help students build this knowledge that you have implemented or have read about.

• Phonemic Awareness: What Does it Mean?This 2003 update from EducationNews.org explores how best to define phonemic awareness. While you're there, check out the other Education News articles on phonics and phonemic awareness.
• Children of the Code
  This site, for a PBS documentary and professional development effort that looks at the "code" that forms the foundation of our language, is still in an early stage of construction at this time but nonetheless includes provocative perspectives about reading instruction.
  

View References for this lesson.

Assessment Activity

This completes Lesson 2. In Lesson 3, we'll explore the importance of teaching vocabulary.

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