ABSTRACT
Due to the developmental, foundational nature of both phonological and phonemic awareness in helping children learn to read, this chapter focuses on children in kindergarten and first grade. Phonological awareness and phonemic awareness are related terms that are often used interchangeably by teachers. Rhyme awareness is a part of phonological awareness and is a stepping-stone for children on the way to developing phonemic awareness. Building on the foundation of all these phonological skills, students will start to develop phonemic awareness—the ability to play with those smallest speech sounds in language, phonemes. All phonemic awareness activities should begin with oral language. Phonemic awareness should begin with sounds in spoken words with no letters present. Over time, print can be added to phonemic awareness activities. As students learn to identify some letters, these letters can be used to show how the alphabet represents speech sounds.
