Phonological awareness can be thought of as a continuum, or a path. As the graphic below shows, children move along the continuum as they progress from a simple to a far more complex understanding of how language sounds and works. The steps are progressive for most, but not all children. Some children hop ahead to master complex skills, only to have to return to grasp some seemingly easier ones.

 

The base of the pyramid or foundation is an understanding of language in full sentences. Moving up the pyramid illustrates the progression of how children's understanding of language becomes more complex as they are able to identify and combine syllables, onsets and rimes, and phonemes. The interactive graphic below shows the connection between an understanding of language and skills like rhyming and alliteration, and shows the importance of listening in the development of all skills.

 

Click on any section of the interactive graphic below to see descriptions of the different parts of the Phonological Awareness Continuum.

Phonological Awareness Continuum

Click on any of the steps to see a description of that step

Phonological Awareness Continuum


  Sentence Segmenting

 

Sentence segmenting focuses on being able to separate the speech stream into single word units. For example, the sentence "My-name-is-John" has four words. Students can snap, tap, jump, etc., while they say the words, and they can use manipulative to move to show each word unit.


  Listening

 

Sentence segmenting focuses on being able to separate the speech stream into single word units. For example, the sentence "My-name-is-John" has four words. Students can snap, tap, jump, etc., while they say the words, and they can use manipulative to move to show each word unit.


  Alliteraction

 

Sentence segmenting focuses on being able to separate the speech stream into single word units. For example, the sentence "My-name-is-John" has four words. Students can snap, tap, jump, etc., while they say the words, and they can use manipulative to move to show each word unit.


  Rhyming

 

Sentence segmenting focuses on being able to separate the speech stream into single word units. For example, the sentence "My-name-is-John" has four words. Students can snap, tap, jump, etc., while they say the words, and they can use manipulative to move to show each word unit.


  Syllable Segmenting and Blending

 

Syllable segmenting refers to the ability to separate a word into its parts (syllables), while Syllable Blending refers to putting the parts back together to make a word. Compound words are easily manipulated in this way. The words "cow" and "boy" make "cowboy." "Thomas" has two syllables.


  Onset-Rime Segmenting and Blending

 

Rhyming focuses attention on sounds at the ends of words. For example, the rhyming words cat, sat, mat, and hat all end with the sound /at/. When children are able to hear that words rhyme, they are noticing the "rime" part of the word.


  Phoneme Segmenting, Blending, and Manipulation

 

Phoneme Segmenting focuses on breaking apart words into individual phonemes. For example, the word sat is broken into the phonemes, /s/ /a/ /t/.

 

Phoneme Blending is the opposite. It combines phonemes to make words (e.g., /s/+/a/+/t/ is sat).

 

Phoneme Manipulation focuses on replacing individual sounds in a word to make other words. For example, if the word is sat, replacing the /a/ sound with an /i/ sound makes the word sit.