This course, Phoneme Awareness for Paraprofessionals, is designed for paraprofessionals like you — teaching professionals who are often asked to give each student the additional review and practice that they need to learn to read fluently.

In this course, you’ll learn about phonemes — the sounds of language — and how to help your students improve their phoneme awareness for learning to read and spell.

Now, meet your course guide, Dr. Bernadette Pilar Zermeño, in the video below. She’ll help you get started with the course!

Watch Dr. Zermeño Explain Phoneme Awareness

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Hi, I'm Dr. Bernadette Pilar Zermeño. Welcome to our course on phoneme awareness. I'm so glad you're here. I've been teaching young children for more than 20 years with a special focus on helping multilingual learners. Like you, I give my heart and soul to students every day, helping them become strong and confident readers.

This course is all about phonemes. Phonemes are tiny individual speech sounds that we blend together to make words like the /p/ sound you hear at the beginning of the word pump and the /ă/ sound at the middle of the word bat. Phonemes are not the same as letters. There are four letters in the word shop, but only three phonemes — /sh/, /ŏ/, /p/.

For most children, phonemic awareness is an important step in the process of learning how to read. Phonemic awareness means that they can identify and then manipulate individual sounds in a spoken word. If a student hears the word dog, they can understand that it's composed of three sounds — /d/, /ŏ/, /g/. If they take out /d/ and replace it with /f/, the word becomes fog. Some students will learn this quickly, while others might need lots of practice on the road to becoming skilled readers.

We'll begin the course exploring the world of phonemes so that you'll be better prepared to teach your students about them. Then we'll present some expert teaching strategies. By the end of the course, you'll be ready to teach your students everything they need to know about phonemes, and to set them on a path towards becoming strong readers.

Let's get started, and I hope you have a great time learning.

Image of apple with the phonemes written out - /ă/, /p/, /l/..

Let's Get Started!

Phonemes are the smallest building blocks of spoken language. Phonemes are the sounds we hear and say — like when we hear the short vowel sound /ă/ at the start of the word apple, or the /p/ that follows /ă/.

We blend phonemes together to say whole words — like when we blend the three phonemes /ă/, /p/, and /l/ together to say the whole word apple.

Listen as we blend the phonemes.

/ă/, /p/, /l/ apple

Teacher Tip

What do slashes and marks around letters mean?

When you see slashes around letters in this course, like this … /m/ … it means we are referring to the sound that letter makes. /m/ represents the sound “mmm” rather than the letter name, which is “em.” So whenever you or your students see a letter in slashes, think to yourself of the sound it makes.

Two marks on top of vowel sounds are also important to know: “⏑” and “-”.

When you see a “⏑” mark on top of a vowel sound, it is called a breve. We use it to show short vowel sounds, like the /ŏ/ sound in the word top and the /ŭ/ sound in the word cut.
When you see a “-” mark on top of a vowel sound, it is called a macron. We use it to show long vowel sounds, like the /ī/ sound in the word hike and /ā/ sound in the word day.

Phoneme awareness means knowing that words are composed of separate speech sounds.

Students with phoneme awareness identify the /ă/ phoneme in the word apple and know it is the beginning sound of that word. They can also tell you that it is the same sound as the middle sound in the word cat. And those skills are critical for learning to read and write because when a student can hear and produce a sound in a word, they are prepared to pair the sound with the letter or spelling pattern when it comes to the tasks of reading and spelling.

The words "apple" and "cat" with the 'a' undelined.

Phonemes Are the Building Blocks!

Teachers who know about phonemes will be better prepared to help their students learn about them. In this section of the course, you'll learn more about phonemes so that you are ready to teach phoneme awareness!

Just like your students, you add the new things you learn onto what you already know. For this reason, it's good to take a moment to remind yourself of what you already know about phonemes and how to teach them.

Watch literacy coach Susan Robison in this model teaching video to help you remember.

Video thumbnail for Isolating Phonemes with Susan Robison — Produced by Reading Universe, a partnership of WETA, Barksdale Reading Institute, and First Book

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Susan Robison: Okay, my friends. Today we are going to practice finding ending sounds and words. I know you've done a lot of work on finding beginning sounds, right, but today we are going to focus on ending sounds. Why do you think that would be important? It's so important for us to listen to all the sounds and words, so we will be able to repeat them, but then eventually be able to read them and write them, right? So we need to hear all the sounds and words.

Alright, so what we're going to do today is I have some special pictures for us to name. We're going to name the picture, and then we're going to take our hand and repeat the name of the picture and find the ending sound and tap on it. So for example, if I showed you a picture of a dog, I would say /d/, /ŏ/, /g/. And then tap on it again and say /g/. All right. Are you ready?

Students Yes.

Susan Robison: Yes. Okay. Our first word, my friends, and our first picture is, everyone say it together ...

Students: Toothbrush.

Susan Robison: Now, what I'd like you to do is trace your rollercoaster and end at that ending sound and we'll say it twice. Let's go on our rollercoaster ride ...

Students: Toothbrush.

Susan Robison: And what's at the end? Everyone point to that stop sign and say ...

Students: /ssssh/.

Susan Robison: Very good. Who would like to tell me what this is? [Teacher points to a picture.] Yes, Olivia.

Olivia: An instrument.

Susan Robison: It is an instrument. Very good. More specifically, this instrument ... the name of it. Listen very carefully. It rhymes with "larp," but it starts with, /h/. What could it be? Everybody?

Students: A harp.

Susan Robison: Yes. Let's all say that together.

Ms. Robison and Students: Harp.

Susan Robison: Now let's rollercoaster it.

Susan Robison and Students: /h/, /ar/, /p/.

Susan Robison: What's at the end?

Students: /p/.

Susan Robison: Oh, my friends, you did a great job producing your ending sounds today, and it's so important to listen to those ending sounds because it will help us with our reading and our writing.

Narrator: For more information, please visit ReadingUniverse.org. Special thanks to Literacy How, Stillmeadow Elementary School, and Stanford Public Schools in Stanford, Connecticut. Reading Universe is made possible by generous support from Jim and Donna Barksdale, the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation, and two anonymous donors. Reading Universe is a service of WETA, Washington, DC, the Barksdale Reading Institute, and First Book.

Susan Robison: This is Reading Universe.

After you watch, ask yourself these questions:

Did you notice that Ms. Robison focused students on the ending sounds of words only? Why do you think she did this?
Have you already spent time working with some of your own students on beginning, middle, or ending sounds? Do some students need more review and practice on any of these?
How was Ms. Robison’s lesson similar to or different from your own teaching experiences?

You might want to watch the video again and think about connections to your own students.

Identifying the phonemes at different places within a word is an important pre-reading skill for all students.

What Are the Phonemes of Our Language?

Phonemes are the individual sounds of language that we blend together into spoken words. The English language has 44+ different phonemes — so we can make lots of words!

Each English phoneme is a unique sound of the language. And each is made by a specific position and motion of our mouths, tongues, and vocal cords. These positions and motions are called articulation features.

Listen and repeat the word moon.

moon /m/, /o͞o/, /n/

As you say the word moon out loud, think about the articulation features of the three phonemes /m/, /o͞o/, and /n/.

To make the /m/ sound, your lips come together and the tongue is in the center of the mouth. Feel your throat. The /m/ sound causes your voice box to vibrate.

How to Produce the Phonemes

Below you’ll find a hands-on interactive guide to pronouncing all 46 phonemes of the English language … from /ă/ as in apple to /zh/ as in treasure. The interactive describes each phoneme along with its specific articulation features using a common language teachers can use during phoneme instruction.. When you know these features, you can help students produce a crisp, clean representation of a sound, which is essential for learning to read and spell a word.

Click on each phoneme to open a sound card and learn how to make all the sounds, the features of the sounds, common spellings, and keyword pictures. Everything you need to know is here, demonstrated in video, photos, and illustrations.

*Note: The interactive image has two pages — one for consonant sounds and one for vowel sounds. Make sure to review both!

1. What Is Phoneme Awareness?

Course 1: Phoneme Awareness for Paraprofessionals

Watch Dr. Zermeño Explain Phoneme Awareness

/ă/, /p/, /l/ apple

Teacher Tip

moon /m/, /o͞o/, /n/