Phonemic awareness is the understanding that spoken words are made up of a series of discrete sounds. It is the ability to isolate and manipulate sounds in spoken language. Listening for sounds may not be easy for some children because when we speak, the individual sounds in words run together and overlap each other. They are not separate and distinct. When we talk to each other we concentrate on the meaning of what is being said and automatically process the sounds without giving them any specific attention. Most phonemic awareness activities are oral. The sub-skills of phonemic awareness are:

• Rhyme: the ability to hear and produce rhyming words. Make a game of rhyming words, for example, 'Which one rhymes: mug-cat or mug-rug.

• Alliteration: to produce words which begin with the same sound. Use children's names and brainstorm adjectives - Ambitious Alan, Marvellous Mandy, Happy Helen.

• Syllabification: a syllable is a word, or part of a word containing one vowel sound. Have fun clapping and counting syllables in names of fruit, car names etc.

• Oral blending: combining individual sounds to make words. This skill builds slowly and requires lots of practice. Make sure that you do not stretch or distort sounds when blending as this makes it very difficult.

• Segmentation: being able to separate words into sounds. The Jelly Bean Game from SoundCheck is ideal for this. Put out a jelly bean for each sound in the word 'hut'. Three jelly beans are put out to represent the three sounds.

• Sound manipulation: being able to insert, delete and reorder sounds in a spoken word.

Having fun with language and sounds is a way of developing phonemic awareness. Enjoy making up rhymes, building up sentences that are full of alliteration, such as, Lucy licks lemon lollipops loudly.

Why is it important?

• Children who are not aware of sounds or phonemes are at serious risk of learning to read and spell.
• Most children are not aware that words are made up of individual sounds as they are concentrating on the meaning of the communication.
• The challenge in teaching phonemic awareness is finding ways for children to discover individual sounds, their sequence in words and then manipulate them.
• Teaching phonemic awareness accelerates the literacy learning process.

Research:

• indicates that a measure of a preschool-age child's phonemic awareness is a strong predictor of their future success in learning to read. (Adams 1998, Shaywitz 2003).
• it has been clearly shown that phonemic awareness can be developed through explicit teaching.
• teaching phonemic awareness and letter-sound relationships helps build the neural systems for reading (Shaywitz S, 2003)
• children between 4 and 6 are at the cusp of learning to read. Their spoken language system is in place. They are ready to build the connection to print. (Shaywitz 2003)

Sally Shaywitch is a pediatrician, neuroscientist and a member of the National Reading Panel. These quotes are taken from an interview with her in the Educational Leadership Journal April 2003. She talks about the way the brains of young children develop and what can be done to prevent early learning difficulties.

Knowing that phonemic awareness is critical in learning to read and spell, Maureen Pollard starting developing her own innovative literacy resources based on this research. Sylvester Syllable Game and SoundCheck have been published and late 2003 SoundCheck 2 will be available.