Phonemic+Awareness


===Phonemic Awareness is the ability to notice, think about, and work with the individual sounds in spoken words. Before children learn to read print, they need to become aware of how sounds in words work. They must understand that words are made up of speech, sounds, or phonemes. === ===Phonemes are the smallest parts of sound in a spoken word that make a difference in the word's meaning. For example, changing the first phoneme in the word //hat// from /h/ to /p/ changes the word from //hat// to //pat//, and so changes the meaning. ===

===Reading and talking to children is a great way to build phonemic awareness. Explicit teaching of phonemic awareness is best done during small group instruction, as students often beneift from listening to their classmates and receiveing feedback from the teacher. ===