Making the Connection Between Phonemic Awareness and Phonics

Teaching beginning readers is such a challenging job, but it is so rewarding to watch things start to click for our little readers. Our students need to be able to make the connection between phonemic awareness and phonics. Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate the sounds in a word, whereas phonics is the relationship between the sounds and letters. With our young readers, we have to make sure to build a strong foundation with these beginning reading skills.

I wanted to share an easy and engaging activity for you to try with your students to help build that connection between phonemic awareness and phonics.

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You will need:

mini erasers, cubes, or some other type of manipulative in 4 different colors
Velcro circles or construction paper circles in the same 4 colors
Dry erase boards and markers
Free Download (included later in this post)

Phonemic Awareness to Phonics Lesson

Place 4 colored circles on the floor next to each child. (I used red, orange, yellow, and green.) Give each child a dry erase board, a marker and eraser, and the 4 colored manipulatives. (I used red, orange, yellow, and green mini-erasers.)

Project the slide show (free download at the end of this post) and have students stretch through the sound for the picture. Then, they will stand up and jump onto a circle for each sound.

After they jump the sounds for each word, they will place an eraser, or other manipulative, on their dry erase board. Then, they will write the corresponding letter for each sound. It truly is an effective way for your students to make those connections between the sounds they hear and the letters to write.

If you’d like to download the FREE slideshow with the pictures that I used for the lesson, click on the picture below. For more phonemic awareness activities, you may want to check out my Phonemic Awareness at your Fingertips packet.