Building Phonemic Awareness With Phoneme Isolation

In this phonemic awareness lesson designed for a first-grade classroom, students engage in games and chants to recognize the same sounds in different words. Students match objects with the same beginning or ending sound, identify whether a given sound occurs at the beginning or ending of a word, and connect phonemes with graphemes.

From Theory to Practice

• Phonemic awareness, which is the awareness that speech consists of a sequence of sounds, should be a priority in early reading instruction.

Common Core Standards

This resource has been aligned to the Common Core State Standards for states in which they have been adopted. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, CCSS alignments are forthcoming.

State Standards

This lesson has been aligned to standards in the following states. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, standard alignments are not currently available for that state.

NCTE/IRA National Standards for the English Language Arts

• 11. Students participate as knowledgeable, reflective, creative, and critical members of a variety of literacy communities.
• 12. Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes (e.g., for learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and the exchange of information).

Materials and Technology

Printouts

Preparation

When the index cards are complete, separate them into pairs that have the same beginning sound and pairs that have the same ending sound.

Student Objectives

Chant beginning and ending phonemes in words

Session 1

can – slap knees, clap hands

/n/ /n/ can – snapping three times

Session 2

Session 3

Extensions

• The phonemic awareness activities should be ongoing. Have students continue doing the games and activities with increasingly harder words.

Student Assessment / Reflections

Students should be assessed through observation and anecdotal notes during the games and activities. Students can also be assessed using the worksheet they complete individually to see if they are able to isolate the phonemes.

• Calendar Activities |
• Lesson Plans |
• Student Interactives

Students study how regional dialect is written phonetically by reading a segment of Harris' story, as well as two others, and compare them using the Interactive Venn Diagram.

"Bessie bird lives in a barn" in this lesson in which students create alliterative animal songs to help them learn letter names and consonant sounds and build phonemic awareness.

Traditional chants and songs are adapted to help young students recognize and generate rhymes. The word and letter patterns involved in rhymes provide a stepping stone to reading skills.

Puzzle Me Words is a fun, educational game for primary students that reinforces letter sounds and how sounds combine to form words.

Picture Match is a matching game that reinforces the concept of beginning-letter and short- and long-vowel sounds.

@Michelle: Unfortunately, this is a known issue with Internet Explorer and the latest version of Adobe Acrobat Reader. Please make sure that you have all security updates for both IE and Reader. If you have access to another web browser such as Firefox or Chrome, please access ReadWriteThink.org through one of these. The PDFs are working fine in Firefox and Chrome. We have contacted Microsoft and Adobe about the problem, but I don't know how soon they will resolve it.

This works well with Kindergarten. I asked the students to bring objects for next time to switch it up. Thank you Ms. Dennis-Shaw

This plan is an excellent example of a phonemic awareness lesson that leads right into a phonics connection! Thank you for posting it. As a facilitator for teachers from all over my state, I'm recommending it as an example for those who are struggling with the basic components of teaching reading to young children.

This works well with Kindergarten. I asked the students to bring objects for next time to switch it up. Thank you Ms. Dennis-Shaw

This lesson worked very well with my students, they were motivated and excited to participate.The resources were a great reinforcement for school and home.

This plan is an excellent example of a phonemic awareness lesson that leads right into a phonics connection! Thank you for posting it. As a facilitator for teachers from all over my state, I'm recommending it as an example for those who are struggling with the basic components of teaching reading to young children.

I am unable to view the handouts. My computer has the adobe installed. I viewed the handouts once before but for some reason they do not work now.

@Michelle: Unfortunately, this is a known issue with Internet Explorer and the latest version of Adobe Acrobat Reader. Please make sure that you have all security updates for both IE and Reader. If you have access to another web browser such as Firefox or Chrome, please access ReadWriteThink.org through one of these. The PDFs are working fine in Firefox and Chrome. We have contacted Microsoft and Adobe about the problem, but I don't know how soon they will resolve it.

This lesson worked very well with my students, they were motivated and excited to participate.The resources were a great reinforcement for school and home.

This works well with Kindergarten. I asked the students to bring objects for next time to switch it up. Thank you Ms. Dennis-Shaw

This plan is an excellent example of a phonemic awareness lesson that leads right into a phonics connection! Thank you for posting it. As a facilitator for teachers from all over my state, I'm recommending it as an example for those who are struggling with the basic components of teaching reading to young children.

This lesson worked very well with my students, they were motivated and excited to participate.The resources were a great reinforcement for school and home.

I am unable to view the handouts. My computer has the adobe installed. I viewed the handouts once before but for some reason they do not work now.

@Michelle: Unfortunately, this is a known issue with Internet Explorer and the latest version of Adobe Acrobat Reader. Please make sure that you have all security updates for both IE and Reader. If you have access to another web browser such as Firefox or Chrome, please access ReadWriteThink.org through one of these. The PDFs are working fine in Firefox and Chrome. We have contacted Microsoft and Adobe about the problem, but I don't know how soon they will resolve it.

I am unable to view the handouts. My computer has the adobe installed. I viewed the handouts once before but for some reason they do not work now.