Why Phonemic Awareness Still Matters for Older Readers
Do you have an older child who struggles with foundational reading skills? Try these simple phonemic awareness activities.
What Is Phonemic Awareness?
Phonemic awareness involves the understanding that words are made up of individual sounds (called phonemes).
If a person has phonemic awareness, they have the auditory skill to detect the individual sounds in words.
For example, the word “dog” consists of three phonemes: the sounds of the consonants “d” and “g” and the short vowel sound of “o”.
How Phonemic Awareness Helps with Reading
Phonemic awareness, along with letter recognition, is one of the foundational skills of reading.
If you can understand and detect the various sounds in words, you can correctly decode letters into their sounds and blend them to make words.
That’s reading!
If you have an older child who still struggles to read, shore up their phonemic awareness. This foundational skill will help them advance their reading ability.
Simple Exercises to Build Phonemic Awareness in Older Students
Older students tend to prefer a different approach to reading instruction.
They aren’t into games or activities they perceive as “babyish,” so try these simple, adaptable exercises to build phonemic awareness in older students.
Sound Isolation Chips
What You’ll Need: Poker chips in two different colors (or use coins in two different values, like pennies and nickels).
Select words from the student’s reading material.
The goal is for the student to isolate the sounds in the words and say them back to you.
- Say a word aloud: “dash”
- “What’s the first sound you hear?” (/d/)
- “What’s the middle sound?” (/a/)
- “What’s the final sound?” (/sh/)
Give the student one color poker chip (such as blue) if they correctly identify the sounds in the word.
Give the student a different color (such as red) if they not only identify the sounds correctly, but they do it speedily.
The goal is to develop speed and accuracy in sound detection. The result is a pile of mostly red poker chips.
Phoneme Switch
What You’ll Need: a whiteboard (a mini one works fine) and a dry-erase marker. You can also use magnetic letter tiles (great for kids who struggle with writing as well). This set is perfect for older students.
- Form a word (either by printing or using magnetic letter tiles). Start with something simple: “bat”
- Have the student sound it out.
- Say, “Change the /b/ to /m/.” (Say the sounds, not the letters, but switch out the letters in the printed word.) (“mat”)
- “Change the /t/ to /p/.” (“map”)
- “Change the /a/ to /o/.” (“mop”)
- Continue building new words from different phonemes.
Sound Boxes (Elkonin Boxes)
What You’ll Need: a small whiteboard to lay flat, a dry-erase marker, and tokens or poker chips.
- Draw the number of boxes on a small whiteboard equivalent to the number of phonemes in a word (“ship” has three phonemes, so draw three boxes).
- Say the word (“ship”) and have the student move a token into each box when he detects the phoneme. (The student will need three tokens for “ship”)
- Afterward, replace the tokens with the written letters in the word, grouped by phonemes: sh-i-p. You or the student can write these.
Sound Stitch
What You’ll Need: Nothing is needed, but poker chips or tokens are optional.
- Say the individual phonemes in a word, separating them: /f/ /l/ /a/ /p/.
- The student then blends them to say the word smoothly.
- Optional: For every correct answer, the student gets a chip. Play until the student gets a targeted number.
Same or Different?
What You’ll Need: a dry-erase board and either a dry-erase marker or magnetic letter tiles.
Brainstorm pairs of words that have identical consonant phonemes but different vowel sounds, like ship/sheep, pair/poor, mat, mitt. (Students often struggle to distinguish vowel sounds.)
- Say two words (either the same word twice or one of the word pairs: “ship, sheep.”
- Ask, “Is it the same word or different?”
- After the student identifies the pair as identical or different, form the word with letter tiles or write it on the whiteboard.
Rhyme and Replace
What You’ll Need: Nothing is needed, but you can use magnetic letter tiles or a dry-erase marker and a magnetic whiteboard.
- Say a word: “night”
- Ask, “What rhymes with night?” (“light”) Note: You can reinforce this by spelling night with letter tiles and removing the “n”.
- “What letter changes the sound from night to light?” (/l/)
- If using a whiteboard, add the tile to form the new word.
- Repeat the process, making chains of rhyming words.
Boosting Reading Skills in Older Students
Older students who struggle with reading may lack foundational reading skills, such as phonemic awareness.
With these age-appropriate games and exercises, you can develop phonemic awareness in a simple and effective way.
