You may have heard the terms Phonemic Awareness and Phonological Awareness used interchangeably when talking about reading instruction, but they are not the same thing. Phonological Awareness is an umbrella term which addresses the ability to recognize and manipulate the spoken parts of sentences and words. It includes rhyming, onset and rime, syllables, and phonemes.

A phoneme is the smallest unit of speech and therefore Phonemic Awareness is the ability to recognize and manipulate the smallest units of a spoken word (the phoneme). The English language is made up of 44 phonemes and it is important that children can identify and manipulate phonemes in order to match these sounds with letters on a page. Explicit practice with phonemic awareness; activities that require students to isolate and manipulate phonemes, and ultimately attach them to graphemes (letters) builds a strong knowledge base for decoding and an understanding of how words are put together for encoding. Strong phonemic awareness skills enable readers to isolate, and flex sounds when they come across new words and seek to match them with the words they have heard and/or speak.