The 6 Layers of Phonemic Awareness

According to David Kilpatrick, phonemic awareness is the awareness of and ability to manipulate the individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words. There are 6 layers of phonemic awareness, building from the simplest to the most complex. Each of these skills can be established through targeted instruction and practice.

<h2>The 6 Layers of Phonemic Awareness</h2>

<h3>1. Phoneme Isolation</h3>
<p>Phoneme isolation is the ability to hear and identify individual sounds in words. This is the simplest form of phonemic awareness and serves as the foundation for more complex skills.</p>

<h3>2. Blending</h3>
<p>Blending involves combining individual phonemes to form words. This skill is essential for reading as it helps children decode words by merging sounds together.</p>

<h3>3. Segmenting</h3>
<p>Segmenting is the ability to break a word into its individual sounds or phonemes. For example, a child given the word "bat" can segment it into the individual sounds /b/ /a/ /t/. This skill is crucial for spelling and helps children understand the structure of words.</p>

<h3>4. Phoneme Addition</h3>
<p>Phoneme addition is the ability to add phonemes to a given word to produce a new word. For instance, saying the word "rain" and then adding /g/ at the beginning to form the new word "grain."</p>

<h3>5. Phoneme Deletion</h3>
<p>Phoneme deletion is the ability to remove phonemes from a word. For example, saying the word "horse" and then removing the /h/ sound to get "orse."</p>

<h3>6. Phoneme Substitution</h3>
<p>Phoneme substitution involves replacing one phoneme with another in a word. This manipulation requires students to hold phonemes in their working memories long enough to make the substitution and then blend the phonemes back together to form a new word.</p>

<h3>Phoneme Manipulation</h3>
<p>The 4th, 5th, and 6th layers are all considered phoneme manipulation. Manipulation is more challenging because it requires students to hold phonemes in their working memories long enough to add, delete, or substitute specific phonemes and then blend them back together to form a new word. These activities are an excellent way to build refined, advanced phonemic awareness, particularly for students who have mastered segmentation and blending.</p>

<h2>When to Teach Phonemic Awareness?</h2>
<p>According to Wiley Blevins, phonemic-awareness tasks should be part of a kindergarten curriculum. Most children can master rhyming and alliteration by the age of 5. While these activities are fun, instructional time is better spent working with words at the sound level.</p>
<p>Segmenting words is essential for spelling, and the majority of children can master it by the end of 1st grade. Phoneme manipulation is more complex, and Blevins recommends introducing these tasks in the middle of 1st grade.</p>
<p>If your child struggles with these tasks, early intervention is critical. Give us a call today!</p>

<h2>Why is Phonemic Awareness Important?</h2>
<p>Any language system connecting written letters to spoken word sounds requires phonemic awareness. A student cannot connect the letters to sounds unless they have knowledge of both and understand that there is a relationship between letters and sounds. This relationship is known as the alphabetic principle.</p>
<p>Much research has found that phonemic awareness is necessary for learning to read an alphabetic language. Children who can take apart words into sounds, recognize them, and put them together again have the foundational skills needed to learn to read.</p>
<p>Phonemic awareness is a vital component of reading success, and by focus