Grades
PreK - 2
Boost young learners’ confidence and comprehension by revisiting the foundations of reading.
If your students are working on phonics, decoding, or spelling, it may be helpful to regularly revisit basic phonemic awareness, says Karen Baicker, executive director of the Yale Child Study Center-Scholastic Collaborative for Child & Family Resilience and publisher for Family and Community Engagement (FACE) at Scholastic.
“Phonemic awareness is the most fundamental precursor to reading,” Baicker says. “Building phonemic awareness begins with word play — listening to sounds, exaggerating them, and manipulating them. Phonics, decoding, fluency, and comprehension can’t take place without the ability to break words into units of sound.”
To strengthen your students’ early reading skills, Baicker recommends playing simple syllable and rhyming games. Here are three phonemic awareness exercises you can use to build a stronger foundation and boost confidence in your students.
Children love to come up with rhymes, and encouraging them to do so helps build their phonemic awareness.
Baicker recommends asking your students to produce rhymes for simple words — think cat, dog, run — and emphasizing the initial sound in each word.
Afterward, read rhyming books like Frog on a Log and We’re Going on a Bear Hunt aloud to incorporate even more fun and learning into story time.
A silly read-aloud story with funny rhymes and hilarious illustrations.
Join a brave family as they head off in search of bears in this classic depiction of the beloved children's rhyme.
During story time — whether it's a virtual read-aloud or in-person — always emphasize the initial consonant when you read words like snake or monster, suggests Baicker. This means reading the words as s-s-s-snake and m-m-m-monster, and then having students do the same.
Once students have those beginning sounds down, take it a step further by asking them to highlight the beginning sounds of their first or last names.
Fly Guy and Buzz are going to the zoo to learn all about snakes. With straightforward text, humorous asides, and kid-friendly full-bleed photographs throughout, young readers will love learning about these slithery creatures.
A unique monster-under-the-bed story with the perfect balance of giggles and shivers, this picture book relies on the power of humor over fear, appeals to a child's love for creatures both alarming and absurd, and glorifies the scope of a child's imagination.
To help your students identify syllables, Baicker suggests playing clapping games.
“You can also do the same thing to identify sounds,” she says. “For example, with the word cat, clap three times for c-a-t.”
Book collections featuring early reader favorites like Pete the Cat and Clifford will inspire fun rounds of syllable clapping — and even more phonemic awareness — during story time!
Dirt on his new shoes? First day of school? Pete the Cat knows how to take it all in stride.
Shop more books and resources to teach phonological and phonemic awareness below! Find all books and resources at The Teacher Store.
Children climb to new heights in reading and writing with these fun, engaging, reproducible word-building games!
Emphasizing the joys of self-expression, this read-aloud spotlights Jerome, a little boy learning to delight in language.
These easy-to-manage, ready-to-reproduce practice packets are a perfect way to target the phonics skills children need to master. Activities include word-shape recognition puzzles, fill-in rhymes, riddles, and stories, word searches, scrambled sentences, word sorts, and much more.
Inspire young children to read with this library of enjoyable, easy-to-manage decodable readers. The adorable, illustrated stories in this set target specific phonics skills, such as short vowels, long vowels, consonant blends, digraphs, and more.
Students climb to new heights in reading and writing with these fun, engaging, reproducible word-building games-now also available for whole-class participation through the interactive whiteboard!
Designed especially for pre-readers, these hands-on activities help children develop an awareness of sounds that is essential to reading success.
Mastering short and long vowels is easy with these playful, no-prep packets!
Phonemic awareness, life science, and healthy eating—all in one!
Scholastic Phonics Readers are a fun and engaging way for children to consistently apply their developing phonics skills while reading short, enjoyable stories. These texts provide children with early reading access through independent, sound-controlled reading materials and systematic phonics instruction.
