Tips for Phonemic Awareness and Phonics

• Research shows that most poor readers have poor phonemic awareness.
• Develop methods of assessing the learner’s strengths and weaknesses. An assessment can be as simple as observing that a learner cannot read blended sounds. It would then be clear that blended sounds are an area to teach.
• Focus on sounds the learner is having difficulty with. Don’t get bogged down in teaching phonemes and phonics the learner already knows.
• Focus on one or two phonemic tasks and provide opportunity for practice.
• Use only a small portion of the tutoring session to focus on phonics and phonemic awareness. Otherwise, the learner will become bored and lose interest in the tutoring session. Remember that every session should include time focused on each component of reading. Combine phonics and phoneme awareness with fluency, vocabulary and comprehension activities in each tutoring session.
• Adjust the difficulty of your lesson so the learner is 80-90 per cent successful. Make the exercises easier by having fewer choices and shorter words. If the learner is becoming frustrated, discontinue the exercise and move onto other activities where he or she experiences success.
• Explain to learners that the purpose of learning phonemes and phonics is to help them read or sound out unknown words and to become better readers. Connect the phonics and phonemes they learn with text that is immediately relevant to them.
• It is important to teach phonemic awareness and phonics together. Focus not only on the sound the letter makes (phonics) but on how it sounds in the word (phonemic awareness). In other words, do not teach sounds in isolation, without connecting them to words. Instead, teach sounds using whole words.
• Look for a good phonics workbook that focuses on using sounds in words.
• Some learners may not be able to hear all the sounds in a word. Using rhymes and word families to teach sounds can help.
• Teach vowels in word families especially if the learner has difficulty hearing the vowel sounds.
• Teach phonics from the easiest sounds to the hardest. (See the sequence below.)

Based on McShane, S. (2005). Applying research in reading instruction for adults: First steps for teachers. Washington, D.C.: National Center for Family Literacy and National Institute for Literacy: The Partnership for Reading. www.nifl.gov/partnershipforreading/publications/applyingresearch.pdf.

Phonics Sequence

Going from easiest to hardest teach phonics in the followng order:

• initial consonants
• final consonants
• short vowels
• consonant blends (bl, fr, gr, spr)
• long vowel sound
• consonant digraph, in other words, two consonants but one sound (th, sh ch, ng,ck)
• vowel digraph, in other words two vowels but one sound (ea, oa, ee, ai)
• diphthongs, in other words, two vowels and two sounds (oi-oil, oy –boy)
• soft c and g (city, giant)
• silent letters (knife, write)
• vowels controlled by r, l and w (car, fawn).

Adapted from Martin, M. (1999). Phonics sequence. Red Deer, Alberta. Training material.

Handout 6.3