Step one.

If you said, “Jordan, give me a step-by-step plan to teach my child how to read.” I’d say, NO BIGGIE! For real you could start here.

Phonemic Awareness. It’s a fancy name, not something to be scared about. Phonemic awareness is taking the sounds (Phonemes) that each letter or letter combination is made of and manipulating them. Formally to Reading Rockets

“. . . individual sounds are called phonemes, and children who know about the connection between a letter and its phoneme have an easier time learning to read” (Reading Rockets, 2012).

Phonemic Awareness or P.A. is an important first step because it separates the letter shapes and the sounds. We’re starting from a place most kids are already doing, speaking. Most babies begin by making noises. As caregivers or parents, we take those noises and give them purpose and structure. Let me give you an example with the word Cat we can do a lot of P.A. following this example:

Finally, change the /s/ to a /b/ (substitution)

bat

Take away the /c/ sound (deletion)

sat

Add a /s/ before the word (addition)

scat

Break it apart (Segmenting)

/c/ /a/ /t/

Put it together, (blending)

Cat

START HERE!!! What is the first sound? (isolation)

/c/

Here you took one word and went up and down from Isolation the simplest form of P.A. to substitution the hardest.

Okay, That’s great… Why does this matter??

Your child will learn to read faster when they start with Phonemic Awareness. How do I know? I did this with my kids. It takes the fear out of looking at a letter, basically a scribble when they start, and gives them the confidence to say “Oh B says /b/ like at the beginning of bear. got it!”

So pick a word and practice. Another great thing is to rhyme, the most amazing way to be a phonemic awareness pro!

Here in the shop is a pamphlet in English and Spanish to help you understand Phonemic Awareness more!