I'm a literacy specialist, and in this video, I'm going to explain the differences between phonics, phonological awareness, and phonemic awareness, and explain some example activities for all three.

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So first of all, the terms, phonics, phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, very similar, right?

If you think it's a little confusing, leave me a comment and say, confusing, exclamation point.

So, yes, very similar, however, they do mean different things, and it is important to understand the differences.

And I think a great place to begin is by understanding the term phoneme, okay?

A phoneme is one sound, so it could be the phoneme mm, or ss, or ch, it's like the smallest sound unit in English or a language, okay?

So phonemic awareness is simply awareness of phonemes, awareness of the individual sounds in words.

And so phonemic awareness skills are things like identifying that the first sound in the word brush is sh.

As kids progress in their phonemic awareness skills, they'll eventually be able to do things like manipulate phonemes.

So for example, take the word cat and switch out the k for mm to make mat.

So that's a more advanced phonemic awareness skill.

Now phonemic awareness is one subskill that falls into the larger category of phonological awareness.

So phonological awareness includes all kinds of ways of working with sounds and word parts, and we're just working with sounds here.

We're not working with any letters, words, phonics, nope, not yet.

So phonological awareness includes phonemic awareness, which is what we just talked about.

It includes things like rhyming, cat, hat, they rhyme.

It includes things like identifying individual words in sentences.

So if you say the dog ran with me, can kids identify the dog ran with me as separate words?

That's part of phonological awareness as well.

Phonological awareness also includes things like syllable blending or segmenting.

So elephant, can they break a word into its syllables like that?

Or if you say zebra, can they say zebra?

Those are examples of phonological awareness skills.

Onset and rhyme too.

So can they take the word sheep and break it up into sh, the onset, and eep, the rhyme.

So phonological awareness includes phonemic awareness and many, many other skills as well.

So now last but not least, we have phonics.

So far, all we've been talking about are things that can be done in the dark or with our eyes closed.

So we're only working with the sounds when it comes to phonemic awareness and phonological awareness.

Now, phonics is a little different.

Phonics is the study of how letters and letter combinations connect to sounds.

So at a very basic level, it's knowing that the letter M can represent the sound mm, or a little more advanced, knowing that the letter S can represent the sound ss or zz.

Knowing that AI can represent the sound ay, the long A as in rain.

Or knowing that CH can represent the sound ch.

Those are all examples of phonics skills or phonics understandings that kids learn as they learn to read.

All right.

So I hope this was helpful in understanding the differences between phonemic awareness, phonics and phonological awareness.

If you would like a complete phonics scope and sequence that actually shows you what skills to teach and when in kindergarten, first grade, and second grade, look for the link below.

I have one for you that's absolutely free.

So grab that now.

I hope this was helpful.

Again, hit the like button, subscribe, and I'll see you in the next video.