Phonemic Awareness

Instruction

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Critical Features of Phonemic Awareness Instruction

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PA Critical Pieces Puzzle Graphic Green Piece Phonemic Awareness is a critical component of reading instruction but not an entire reading program. It absolutely needs to be taught, but should only be 10-15 minutes per day of your reading instruction.
PA Critical Pieces Puzzle Graphic Blue Piece Teachers increase effectiveness when the manipulation of letters is added to phonemic awareness tasks. Phonemic awareness is an auditory skill, but once children start to become familiar with the concept, teachers can introduce letter tiles or squares and manipulate them to form sounds and words.
PA Critical Pieces Puzzle Graphic Yellow Piece Phonemic awareness needs to be taught explicitly. The instructional program must show children what they are expected to do. Teachers must model skills they want children to perform before the children are asked to demonstrate the skill.
PA Critical Pieces Puzzle Graphic Red Piece If you focus on just a few types of phonemic awareness, you get better results. There are a lot of skills in phonemic awareness, but research has found that blending and segmentation are the 2 critical skills that must be taught. Instruction must focus on blending and segmenting words at the phoneme, or sound level. This is an auditory task.
PA Critical Pieces Puzzle Graphic Purple Piece Research has found that you get better results when teaching phonemic awareness to small groups of children rather than an entire class.