1. The Development of Phonological Skills

   Basic listening skills and "word awareness" are critical precursors to phonological awareness. Learn the milestones for acquiring phonological skills.

2. Why Phonological Awareness Is Important for Reading and Spelling

   Phonological awareness is critical for learning to read any alphabetic writing system. And research shows that difficulty with phoneme awareness and other phonological skills is a predictor of poor reading and spelling development.

3. Making Friends With Phonemes

   This article suggests focusing on a basic set of individual phonemes, activities to make each phoneme memorable, and practice finding the phonemes in spoken words.

4. Playing with Word Sounds: Stretch and Shorten

   Blending (combining sounds) and segmenting (separating sounds) are phonological awareness skills that are necessary for learning to read. There are lots of ways families can work to develop a child's phonological skills.

5. Environmental Print

   Letters are all around us! Here are some ideas to use print found in your everyday environment to help develop your child's reading skills.

6. Onset/Rime Games

   Teaching children about onset and rime helps them recognize common chunks within words. This can help students decode new words when reading and spell words when writing.

7. Rhyming Games

   A child's ability to identify rhyme units is an important component of phonological awareness. Children benefit from direct instruction on rhyme recognition paired with fun activities that target this skill.

8. Elkonin Boxes

   Elkonin boxes help students build phonological awareness by segmenting words into sounds or syllables and teach how to count the number of phonemes in the word.

9. Target the Problem: Phonological and Phonemic Awareness
   Basic information about the importance of phonological and phonemic awareness in learning to read, identifying if a child is struggling, and how teachers and parents can help.
10. Clues to Dyslexia in Early Childhood

    Trouble learning rhymes, the inability to associate letters with sounds, and failure to understand that words "come apart" are common signs of dyslexia.

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