The importance of developing an ability to read in the first few years of education cannot be overemphasized. According to research, 95% of people can learn to read with evidence-based assessment and instructional approaches supported by the science of reading (Moats, 2020). Children as young as three to four years old can begin to develop a strong foundation in reading by practicing various, age-appropriate phonological awareness skills through nursery rhymes, poems, and sing-song activities.
This is exciting news! Educators can lay the building blocks for early literacy success using the research-based guidance of the phonological awareness continuum.
What is the Continuum of Phonological Awareness?
Phonological awareness is a term that describes the ability to recognize, think about, and manipulate the sounds in our spoken language. Researchers recognize it as a crucial continuum of skills for early literacy development because it helps children understand the relationship between sounds and letters, a key component of the alphabetic principle (Moats, 2010).
Literacy experts remind us that students with good phonological awareness are more likely to become good readers, while students with poor phonological awareness skills will likely struggle in reading (Kilpatrick, 2015). In short, phonological awareness skills lay the foundation for children to become fluent readers.
The phonological awareness continuum is a progression of skills related to the sounds of language, ranging from basic listening and rhyming to more complex manipulations of individual sounds (phonemes). It progresses from larger units of sound (words, syllables) to smaller units of sound (onset/rime, phonemes). This continuum of skills is often represented by an image of a set of stairs to illustrate how each skill builds upon the next. The progression is crucial for developing literacy, as it lays the foundation for understanding how sounds correspond to letters, which is essential for reading and spelling.
The Stages of the Phonological Awareness Continuum
The phonological awareness continuum provides a developmental trajectory for teaching phonological awareness and phonemic awareness instruction.
- Word Awareness
The child has an understanding that sentences and phrases can be broken down into smaller parts called words. Activities allow children to practice counting words in a sentence or a phrase, sentence segmentation, and construction. Rhyming activities include recognizing and producing words that rhyme, like “cat” and “hat.”
- Syllable Awareness
Syllable awareness activities provide opportunities to practice counting syllables in a word and manipulating syllables (addition and deletion). Early activities may begin with compound words to enhance the child’s understanding of the parts of the whole word.
- Onset and Rime Awareness
Practicing with onset and rime will help students identify smaller sound units in words. The onset is the initial consonant sound in the word (/b/ in ball), and the rime is the vowel and all following consonant sounds (all in ball). Activities that target onset and rime will help children identify common patterns in words.
- Phonemic Awareness
Phonemic awareness skills are the more complex set of skills within the phonological awareness continuum. They focus on the sounds that make up syllables and words. Various manipulation tasks are targeted to include isolation, blending, segmentation, and manipulation of phonemes. Activities fall into subskills to teach children to understand that words are made up of phonemes that are represented with letters (graphemes). Learning these skills will help them to read, spell, and write.
Activities to support the development of these skills are available at https://journal.imse.com/clasroom-activities-to-facilitate-phonemic-awareness/.
How are Phonological Awareness Skills Taught in Schools?
Research-based phonological awareness instruction is highly correlated with improved reading success (Kirby et al., 2025, Torgesen et al., 1997). Training can be easily implemented in the Tier 1 classroom as fun, engaging activities to target the reading development needs of all students (Khan et al., 2021). The skills on the phonological awareness continuum progress from simple to more complex, preparing children to master essential blending and segmenting skills that directly support decoding (reading) and encoding (spelling) (Treiman, 1993).
Explicit phonological awareness instruction across the early grades can eliminate future reading problems for most students. Students who struggle to develop age-appropriate skills can be identified early with regular assessment.
Phonological awareness assessment helps us to identify at-risk students and allows for continuous progress monitoring to ensure instructional effectiveness. Research indicates that skills on the continuum, such as segmentation, can predict a child’s future reading ability (Torgesen et. al. 1994) and lead to the identification of students who have dyslexia (Griffiths & Snowling, 2001).
When data indicates that children continue to struggle with phonological awareness after receiving instruction in a whole group setting, teachers may decide to provide differentiated and targeted instruction in various ways, including:
- Incorporating additional modeling
- Providing guided practice and continuous feedback
- Adding opportunities for student practice
- Using visuals and manipulatives (Elkonin boxes, tokens) to represent individual sounds
- Scaffolding to break skills into smaller steps
- Small group or one-to-one intervention
Utilizing Structured Literacy to Tackle Phonological Awareness Deficits
Phonological awareness is a crucial skillset in learning to read that lays the foundation for Structured Literacy. Structured Literacy is a term that the International Dyslexia Association adopted to refer to the many programs (like Orton-Gillingham) that teach literacy skills by following decades of evidence and research behind the science of reading.
Programs that exemplify the components and methods outlined in Structured Literacy are beneficial for all students and essential for those who struggle with learning to read. Structured Literacy provides a framework to include both the principles (how we should teach) and the elements (what we should teach).
Principles (how we should teach):
- Systematic and cumulative instruction
- Explicit
- Diagnostic and responsive
Elements (what we should teach):
- Phonology
- Sound-symbol association
- Syllables
- Morphology
- Syntax
- Semantics
From phonemic and phonological awareness to understanding how vowel sounds and individual phonemes contribute to sentence structure, teachers must be familiar with the main components of Structured Literacy to implement it effectively in their own classrooms.
Boost Phonological Skills with Effective Reading Strategies
IMSE’s Phonological Awareness Program equips educators with the tools, strategies, and resources necessary to ensure student success in foundational literacy skills.
Products for the classroom: https://imse.com/products/
Training programs for educators: https://imse.com/training-descriptions/
Schoolwide or classroom online training: https://imse.com/private-district-trainings/
FAQS About Phonological Awareness Continuum
What is the simplest of the phonemic awareness skills?
Phonemic awareness is a subset of skills under the phonological awareness umbrella and includes the manipulation of sounds in words. The simplest of these skills is phoneme isolation, which requires a child to identify individual sounds in words. For example, a child might be asked to identify the beginning sound in book /b/ or the final sound in cat /t/.
What is the most difficult of the phonemic awareness skills?
Phoneme manipulation is the most complex of the phonemic awareness skills. Children may be asked to add, remove, or change sounds within spoken words. For example, a child might be asked to change the /b/ in brick to /t/ to make the new word trick.
What order should phonological awareness skills be taught?
The phonological awareness continuum serves as a guide to teach skills in a developmental order from easier to more complex. Educators may use this continuum to provide age-appropriate training in the classroom.
How can I tell if a student is struggling with phonological awareness?
Ongoing assessment and progress monitoring will identify students who are struggling to develop these essential skills. Assessment data can be used to make decisions that will enhance targeted instruction and student support.
References
Griffiths, Y. M., & Snowling, M. J. (2001). Auditory word identification and phonological skills in dyslexic and average readers. Applied Psycholinguistics, 22(3), 419–439.
Khan, Masarrat & Khan, Rameeza. (2021). Phonological Awareness and Phonics Instruction: Inclusive practice that benefits all kinds of learners. Asia Pacific Journal of Developmental Differences.
Kirby, John & Deacon, Hélène & Georgiou, George & Geier, Kelly & Chan, Jessica & Parrila, Rauno. (2025). Effects of morphological awareness, naming speed, and phonological awareness on reading skills from Grade 3 to Grade 5. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.
Kilpatrick, D. (2015). Essentials of assessing, preventing, and overcoming reading difficulties. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Moats, L. C. (2020). Teaching Reading Is Rocket Science: What Expert Teachers of Reading Should Know and Be Able to Do. American Federation of Teachers, 1-29.
Moats, L. C. (2010). Speech to print: Language essentials for teachers, 2nd ed. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes Publishing.
Torgesen, J. K., Wagner, R. K., & Rashotte, C. A. (1994). Longitudinal studies of phonological processing and reading. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 27, 276-286.
Torgesen, J. K., Wagner, R. K., Rashotte, C. A., Burgess, S., & Hecht, S. (1997). Contributions of phonological awareness and rapid automatic naming ability to the growth of word-reading skills in second- to fifth-grade children. Scientific Studies of Reading, 1, 161-185.
Treiman, R. (1993). Beginning to spell. A study of first-grade children. New York: Oxford University Press.
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