Florida Department of Education
Phonemic Awareness
Build your library of strategies and activities for teaching phonemic awareness with the ideas provided in this resource. Described here are five different activities to try out with your class.
Florida Center for Reading Research
Phonological Awareness: Phoneme Matching, Initial Phoneme Picture Sort
An activity focuses on phonemic awareness and initial letter sounds. Scholars sort picture cards by saying and matching the initial sounds each word makes.
Florida Center for Reading Research
Phonemic Awareness Instructional Routine: Rhyme
As a class, kindergarteners identify rhyming words. The teacher provides an example of a rhyming pair and explains why they rhyme. Individual learners then respond by saying a word that rhymes with a given word.
Florida Center for Reading Research
Medial Phoneme Find
Help kids isolate medial sounds using this listening activity. They use a visual graphic organizer (included) to match medial phonemes to corresponding pictures. As they listen to each medial sound, they mark the picture with a number.
Curated OER
Mouse Mess
Scholars practice rhyming and phonemic awareness using trade books and poetry. They will listen to the book Mouse Mess several times throughout the week, identifying rhyming words, and matching words that begin with the same sound. Then...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Rhyming A-LOT-OH!
Rhymes are a great way to help your scholars with phonemic awareness and word relationships. Kids work with partners to match cards from a stack to their rhyming counterparts on a game board. There are six different boards, so this will...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Phonics: Letter-Sound Correspondence, Letter Sound Match
Scholars match initial, medial, and final phonemes to individual graphemes. They pick a card, say its name, then find the letter that makes that sound. If the card is a monkey, the learner finds the letter m, matching the grapheme to the...
Achieve3000
Discriminating Phonemes
Develop the fluency of beginning readers one sound at a time with this phonemic awareness lesson plan. Through a series of whole-class instruction, independent practice, and collaborative learning activities, children practice...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Phonological Awareness: Rhyme, Rhyme or No Rhyme
Rhyming is fun, builds phonemic awareness, and is a tried and true pre-reading skill. This activity helps learners identify words that rhyme. Young scholars listen to a song, locate a rhyming word they hear by clapping then draw a...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Phonological Awareness: Phoneme Matching, Medial Match
Early readers get together and match medial phonemes. They take turns picking picture cards from a pile; they say each word, then determine whether the pair has matching medial sounds.
Florida Center for Reading Research
Phonological Awareness: Phoneme Matching, Medial Phoneme Dominoes
Matching medial phonemes can be as easy as playing a game of dominoes! These dominoes contain pictures of items children can say. As they say each word aloud, they work to match the medial sound to one on an adjacent card. Just like real...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Phonological Awareness: Phoneme Matching, Match Maker
Pre-readers identify and match initial phonemes. Scholars take turns choosing one card from each of the three stacks. They say the name of the image on the card, then keep whichever cards have a matching initial phoneme.
Florida Center for Reading Research
Phonological Awareness: Phoneme Matching, Final Phoneme Memory
Try to match the final sounds in this memory game! Learners place all 24 cards upside down and take turns flipping them to see if the final phonemes match. If they do, remove them; if not, put them back. Partners play until all cards...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Phonological Awareness: Rhyme, Rhyme Memory Match
Young scholars play a memory-matching game to practice recognizing rhyming words and sounds. With picture cards, they flip over two cards and say the pictures' names. If the pair make a rhyming match, the learner keeps the cards. The...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Phonological Awareness: Phoneme Matching, Final Phoneme Pie
Words are interesting things—you can change them by adding or subtracting phonemes. Here, emergent readers change the pictures on their phoneme pie by removing or adding various final phonemes. A fun way to build phonetic competency!
Curated OER
Phonological Awareness, Phoneme Manipulating, Phoneme Position Sort
Scholars make new words out of old ones by manipulating phonemes. Pupils mix and match initial, medial, and final phonemes to change words like cap into cup or head into bed.
Florida Center for Reading Research
Phonological Awareness: Phoneme Manipulating, Word Change
Once your scholars know their letter sounds and recognize them in words, have them try making new words by manipulating phonemes. Pupils are given a word change picture board and a stack of word pictures. They pick a card and place it...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Phonological Awareness: Phoneme Isolating, Phoneme Quest
In this phonics activity, little learners glue picture cards under the initial, medial, and final phonemes represented by the lead sound cards. An image of a shark broken into three parts represents the initial phoneme /sh/, the medial...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Fluency: Letter-Sound Correspondence, Make a Match
A memory activity engages young learners in letter-sound correspondence. Pairs take turns examining two sets of cards lying face down. They flip one image card and one letter card, then name the initial sound. If the sounds match, pupils...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Phonological Awareness: Phoneme Blending, What's My Word?
At a listening station, learners listen to a pre-recorded script; they follow the directions and number each picture on their picture chart corresponding to the segmented phonemes they hear.
Curated OER
Dr. Seuss - Make Time for Rhymes
Read the story Green Eggs and Ham to practice phonemic awareness, rhyming, and writing skills with emerging readers. They will match oral words to printed words, create a graphic organizer, and the use rhyming words in an original...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Phonemic Awareness: Phoneme Matching, Sound Pictures and Picture Puzzles
Scholars use a T-chart and puzzle pieces to practice saying and recognizing the medial sound in a series of words. Peers take turns choosing a puzzle piece, saying its name and medial sound, then placing it on their side of the chart.
Florida Center for Reading Research
Word Blender
Little learners will love being able to blend sounds together to make words. This game provides eight onsets and eight rimes that can be used to mix and match to sound out words. This activity is to be completed in pairs and is a great...
Curated OER
Phonemic Awareness, Say It and Move It
Students clap and count sounds when saying different words. In this phonemic awareness lesson plan, students move bingo chips around when hearing a certain number of sounds in words.