Phonological Awareness

Lesaux and Carr (2024) define phonological awareness as, “an awareness of speech sounds” and include phonemic awareness “the ability to identify and manipulate sounds” (p. 3). While some readers gain phonological awareness expertise from being immersed in a variety of meaningful and interesting texts, songs, and rhymes (and the accompanying text-based conversations and teaching that go along with it), other readers may need more systematic phonological awareness instruction. While many schools have adopted remedial phonological awareness programs for use with ALL students, not just those who need extra practice, we urge our colleagues to be mindful; knowing your readers is essential to avoid wasting instructional time on skills and competencies students already excel at. We hope the resources shared by teachers in this section can be used for engaging and meaningful literacy practice in the classroom for those students who need it.