Phonological VS Phonemic Awareness

Jackie @ BestAssess
Sep 28, 2020
2 min read

Updated: Sep 30, 2020

Just released! The Phonological VS Phonemic Awareness Infographic has just been made available to you!

Sick of pulling your hair out trying to remember the difference between phonological awareness and phonemic awareness? Freaking out because you think you might be teaching prep next year for the first time, or for the first time in a long time?

Boy, I remember when I started teaching prep and feeling overwhelmed with all of the different terms associated with early literacy skills. It doesn't help when they sound almost the same!

I kept reading and reading and it just wouldn't stick for me. I ended up drawing a phone to remember the simple fact that phonological awareness is about the sound of language and words, and not about reading letters, words or sentences. I likened it to a phone (before FaceTime was a thing) because you can hear the person talking but you can't see letters, words or sentences.

Then I added an umbrella to my drawing as I realised that phonological awareness was quite a broad concept and phonemic awareness is a smaller part of it. A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound we hear in a word. Hearing a phoneme is the most complex skill in the phonological awareness progression. Next, children are ready to start mapping those phonemes to letters to develop phonic knowledge!

It was so satisfying to finally get this concept to stick through my crazy drawing. I needed all the reinforcements I could get at that point. It can be quite a shock to learn you are going to be teaching prep. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE IT now but I totally empathise with teachers who are new to prep or who are having trouble getting those terms to stick!

So, here it is . . . my spruced up umbrella phone that I hope will help you, like it helped me. Included in this infographic is a break down of the phonological awareness progression, including phonemic awareness, with visual examples!

Subscribe to my blog so you can check out the Phonological Awareness Assessment PDF and other related products as soon as they are released, Stay tuned, more coming soon!

Jackie @ BestAssess