This next learning activity will give you the chance to practice identifying beginning blends, ending blends, and vowel diphthongs. We want you to feel confident that you can identify these types of phonemes. That will help you effectively choose words that your students will work with during your phoneme awareness instruction.

If possible, find a colleague or partner to do these exercises with.

Here’s what to do:

First, say each of the words in the word bank out loud slowly so that you can hear each phoneme separately. Then answer the following questions that will help you think about these words from simple to complex.

Read and answer the following five questions using the words from the word bank. Write your answers down on a piece of paper. Then click the green bars to check your answers. (NOTE: Be careful. Some one of the words will fit in more than one category.)

1. Which of the words in the word bank have only two or three phonemes?
- at
- pup
- night
- chief
2. Which of the words in the word bank have beginning blends?
- flap
- froze
- broil
- swift
- graft
3. Which of the words in the word bank have ending blends?
- fact
- waist
- shift
- moist
- swift
- graft
4. Which of the words in the word bank have both beginning and ending blends?
- graft
- swift
5. Which of the words in the word bank have vowel diphthongs?
- broil
- moist

3.1.1 Practice Choosing Words for Phoneme Instruction

Course 1: Phoneme Awareness for Paraprofessionals