Phonological Awareness: Essential Skills for All Readers

One of the five pillars of teaching children to read is phonological awareness. The foundation for all reading development starts with an awareness of and the ability to manipulate the sounds of our language.

Phonological awareness skills are held as the strongest predictor of success in learning to read. Regardless of age, students with a weakness in phonological awareness will fall behind, experiencing poor spelling, inaccurate decoding of new words, mispronunciation of words, and difficulty remembering or recalling new words. Therefore, pre-readers and beginning and struggling readers and spellers of all ages require purposeful, guided, sequential instruction in foundational phonological awareness skills to make strong print connections tied to skilled reading and spelling.