Phonemic Awareness

Phonemic awareness: what you need to know

Phonemic awareness is essential for learning to read and is a key indicator of early reading success.

Phonemic awareness is the ability to identify and work with the smallest unit of sound in spoken words, called a phoneme. In Kindergarten, students are expected to isolate the phonemes they hear in words, blend phonemes to form spoken words, and segment spoken words into phonemes.

What’s new in the 2026 Curriculum?

In the 2016 Kindergarten Program, phonemic awareness was implied through the Demonstrating Literacy and Mathematics Behaviours frame, specifically in expectations 1.1 and 1.11. Within the 2026 Curriculum, the strand Language Foundations for Reading and Writing has a specific expectation for phonemic awareness that clearly outlines student learning and skill development in isolating sounds, blending phonemes and segmenting spoken words.

Transitioning to phonemic awareness in Grade 1

In Grade 1, students build on Kindergarten learning. The expectations in Grade 1 are to blend and segment words starting with 2 phonemes and moving into longer words, such as blending up to 5-phoneme words.

Teaching phonemic awareness

Phonemic awareness can be developed in short, intentional moments throughout the day, during play, transitions, and phonics instruction. It focuses on hearing and identifying the individual sounds in words and does not require a separate program. Clear, supportive instruction, often following an “I do, We do, You do” approach, helps ensure all students can participate, with some needing more modelling and guided practice.

A helpful starting point is drawing attention to how sounds are made. Noticing what the mouth, tongue, and lips are doing, using mirrors to check, and feeling whether a sound is voiced or unvoiced can make this learning more visible. It is also useful to highlight which sounds can be stretched, like /m/ and /s/, and which stop quickly, like /t/ and /k/.

As letter sounds are introduced, this learning is connected to words by focusing first on beginning sounds, then moving to ending sounds, and later to middle sounds with support. Simple routines such as sorting picture cards by sound help reinforce these connections.

Using manipulatives such as Elkonin boxes helps make sounds more concrete, with students representing each sound in a word using a token. Beginning with simple two- and three-sound words allows students to experience early success.

Phonemic awareness is most effective when it is closely linked to letters. As soon as a sound can be heard and identified, it is connected to its most common spelling. From there, students can build and change simple words, strengthening the connection between sounds and print and supporting early reading and writing.

Assessing phonemic awareness

Phonemic awareness is a screening benchmark used within all three screening windows (beginning, middle, and end) of the year in Kindergarten. The screening focuses on isolating beginning sounds (Acadience and aimswebPlus) and segmenting whole words (Acadience, aimswebPlus, and easyCBM).

For most students, screening data provide enough information to guide next steps. If a student is not meeting the benchmark, this indicates where instruction should begin, such as isolating beginning sounds. Extensive diagnostic assessment is not typically necessary.

Progress monitoring can be used for students receiving additional support to assess whether they are improving over time. These brief, 1-minute measures use similar tasks with different words to track growth and help determine whether support is working.