Do you want to know about the #1 game changer for helping your students become successful readers? Phonemic Awareness. I’ve seen the impact year after year—it’s the foundation that truly makes a difference. The best part? It’s quick and easy to incorporate with phonemic awareness lesson plans that take just 5 minutes a day. In this post, we’ll dive into why phonemic awareness is so crucial and how you can use these simple, effective daily lesson plans to help your students thrive as confident readers!
Phonemic Awareness can be defined as the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate phonemes (aka sounds) in words. This skill is best taught orally, with an “I say, you repeat, think, and solve” type of sequence. While there is a mix of phonological awareness skills (counting syllables, rhyming) in these warm-ups, the main focus is the manipulating of phonemes, creating new words, and listening for word families. These skills are what will help your students become STRONG readers and writers. You'll find if your students are struggling with things like blending CVC words, then they need more support in phonemic awareness. There are the 6 main phonemic awareness skills, in order from simplest to the most complex. You can read more about these specific skills here: Phonemic Awareness Skills Blog Posts.
When students are able to manipulate a word using these phonemic awareness skills, they will become fast and fluent readers. You want to train their brain to see a word family, add a different beginning sound, and be able to read the new word without having to sound out each individual sound. Students should be doing this daily starting in Kindergarten or even Pre-K, to see the most growth.
But just how do you teach these skills daily?
After trying to wing it, or spending way too much time planning, I decided to create a yearlong daily warm-up to practice phonemic awareness.
These daily phonemic awareness lesson plans or warm-ups include 40 weeks of direct instruction implementing over 25 skills! Each week, you will have a set of flashcards to practice first. At the beginning of the year, you will be saying the sound, and students will repeat. However, as soon as they catch on, they can just say the sound once they see the flashcard. To help them stay focused and engaged, I like to use hand motions when I am teaching different sounds.
Each week, you will also have three skills to practice from Monday to Friday. These skills rotate throughout the year, so you will touch back on most of them. Continually reviewing phonemic awareness skills is proven to help students retain that knowledge. You can take a look at everything the weekly lesson plan covers below.
Phonemic and Phonological Awareness have a lot of new terms, especially if it is your first time teaching this! You can find a free list of all the terms on this post here. However, I made sure to write explicit directions for each skill, so you know word for word what to say. It is so easy to follow, that even substitute teachers can easily follow along with no additional directions!
The first time you teach a new skill to your students, you will have to walk them through each step and practice together. It will take a lot of modeling and repeating until they get the hang of it. If they all can't do it independently by Friday, that is completely normal. It's a new skill they just learned a few days ago! By the second or third week of practice, they will start to be able to do most of it independently.
To start these phonemic awareness daily lesson plans in your classroom, designate about 5-10 minutes of your day as “Phonemic Awareness” time when we do our phonemic awareness daily warm-ups. First, I sit my students down on the carpet, criss-cross and facing me. This helps them stay focused and not be tempted to fiddle with things on their table/desks. Next, we start with the flashcard practice, practicing whichever sounds we are working on at the time.
Then, we go through each phonemic awareness skill. I model how to do it first, then we do it together. By the end of the week, my students are mostly doing it independently. While I am doing this with them, I am constantly scanning and making sure everyone is participating. If I notice a few are not, I point out some students who ARE doing a great job and praise them. Usually, this gets everyone back on track.
Twice a week, I do a “Quick Check” with my students. Rather than everyone answering, I pick individual students to answer. The rest of the class gives them a thumbs up or down if it's correct or not, then repeat the answer. You can also pull out whiteboards and have them write down the answer. For example, if you are isolating beginning sounds, have them write the letter, rather than say the sound aloud.
I tell my students that these 5-10 minutes are the MOST IMPORTANT part of our day. Because it truly is! Daily repetition and practice of phonemic awareness is a must starting in Kindergarten.
Planning a phonemic awareness lesson used to take me so much time, and coming up with words on the spot just wasn’t effective. That’s why I created these quick and easy daily lessons that are ready to use—just print and go! This Phonemic Awareness Lesson Plans bundle includes 40 weeks of pre-made, done-for-you lessons that are perfect for Kindergarten and First Grade. The bundle covers 25 key phonemic awareness skills, all developmentally appropriate for young learners. Simply attach it to a clipboard and keep it handy during your phonics lessons. Each week, swap out the previous lessons for the new ones. Check out these warm-ups for Kindergarten and First Grade below!
Teaching Virtually? Make sure to check out the Phonemic Awareness Boom Cards Bundle for extra practice! These Boom Cards are designed to be independent practice your students can do without your help after they are able to do each skill successfully. It helps connect phonemic awareness skills to phonics.
“I am on my 7th year of teaching kindergarten. This year I have a classroom of 26 students in a public school in South Dakota. This year I have a very wide learning continuum in my classroom. I was looking for something to help give a boost to my students who were struggling with phonemic awareness and to help solidify phonemic awareness kills of my higher students. Once I found these lessons, I started using them daily with my students. I have already noticed a huge improvement in all the student’s phonemic awareness skills. According to my latest ESGI assessments my students have improved substantially in the areas of rhyming, syllables, blending, and substituting phonemes to create new words.
I have used the Phonemic Awareness Daily Warm-ups in several different ways in my classroom. I started by using them to begin my whole group reading instruction. All my students were able to learn the expectations this way and become familiar with the routines. After the students were comfortable with the new routine of the warm ups I began using them in my small reading groups, during transitions such as waiting in line for lunch, P.E. etc. and using them as phonemic awareness work with a substitute teacher. I love how quick they are, they can hold the student’s attention well. The directions are explained very thoroughly and have been great to use with a sub for this reason. I can’t wait to continue exploring how I can use Kristina’s phonemic awareness warm- ups in my daily routines in my kindergarten classroom!”
