Unit Overview
Content Area: English Language Arts
Unit Title: Phonological Awareness
Timeline: Ongoing
Target Course/Grade Level: Kindergarten
Unit Summary: Phonological Awareness instruction will offer students a strong understanding of the
sounds in spoken language, an essential concept before students can understand written language.
Throughout the year students will receive multiple opportunities to experience oral language.
Phonological awareness is not an innate skill and therefore must be acquired through training and practice.
The path to phonemic awareness is sequential and occurs in five stages. Phonemic instruction prepares
students to learn about their letter symbols in phonics.
Primary interdisciplinary connections: Technology, Speech and Language
21st century themes and skills: Creative Thinking and Problem Solving, Communication and
Collaboration, Life and Career Skills: -flexibility and adaptability, initiative and self-direction, social
skills, productivity and accountability, leadership and responsibility.
Anchor Standards:
Reading Foundational Anchor Standards are not recognized in the Common Core
Learning Targets/Activities
Domain: Reading Foundational Skills
Cluster: Phonological Awareness
Standard #
Standards
RF.K.2.a-e
Demonstrate understanding of spoken words, syllables, and sounds (phonemes).
a. Recognize and produce rhyming words.
b. Count, pronounce, blend, and segment syllables in spoken words.
c. Blend and segment onsets and rimes of single-syllable spoken words.
d. Isolate and pronounce the initial, medial vowel, and final sounds
(phonemes) in three-phoneme (consonant-vowel-consonant, or CVC)
words.* (This does not include CVCs ending with /l/, /r/, or /x/.)
e. Add or substitute individual sounds (phonemes) in simple, one-syllable
words to make new words.
Unit Essential Questions
Unit Enduring Understandings
 What makes one word sound different than
 A word is made up of a series of
another?
discrete (separate) sounds.
 How can I break a word into its sounds?
 Phonemic awareness includes the ability
to isolate, blend, and manipulate sounds
 How can I put sounds together to a make
in spoken words.
word?
 One’s understanding of the spoken
 How can I manipulate sounds?
word is developed through phonemic
awareness.
 Phonemic awareness is a prerequisite to
and necessary for phonics work to be
effective.
Unit Learning Targets
Students will ...
 Segment and count words in a sentence. (RF.K.2)
 Identify and create a series of rhyming words. (RF.K.2.a)
 Recognize words beginning with the same initial sound (alliteration). (RF.K.2.d)
 Identify the word that does not rhyme in a series (oddity tasks). (RF.K.2.a)
 Identify words with the same beginning or ending consonant sound. (RF.K.2.d)
 Blend syllables to make words. (/ta/-/ble/) (RF.K.2.b)
 Blend onset/rimes of words. (/p/-/an/) (RF.K.2.c)
 Blend individual phonemes to create words. (/s/-/a/-/t/)
 Segment words into syllables. (RF.K.2.b)
 Segment words into onset/rime. (RF.K.2.c)
 Segment words into individual phonemes.
 Isolate/produce initial, medial vowel and final sounds in
words. (RF.K.2.d)
 Substitute initial, medial, final sounds to create new words. (RF.K.2.e)
Learning Activities
 sound/picture/object sorts
 Clapping/snapping/tapping/stomping games
 matching and memory games
 sorting stamped images
 songs, poems, literature and rhymes
 word families
 I-spy
 word pairs
 word ladders
 sound boxes/chips
Evidence of Learning
Formative Assessments
 Teacher observation
 Performance tasks: sorting, literacy center
activities
 Student participation
 Checklists
Summative Assessments
 WAWA (Word Awareness Writing Activity): letter/sound identification and phonics
 Phonological Awareness Inventory
 DIEBELS
RESOURCES/TECHNOLOGY
Teacher Instructional Resources:
 Phonemic Awareness: Playing with Sounds to Strengthen Beginning Reading Skills, Creative
Teaching Press
 Project Read: Phonology
 The Complete Phonemic Awareness Handbook, Anthony Fredricks, Rigby Best Teachers Press
 Phonemic Awareness in Young Children, Marilyn Adams, Barbara Foorman, Ingvar Lundberg,
Terri Beeler
 Reading First, Creative Teaching Press
Integration of Technology: SMARTBoard, Document Camera, SMARTBoard activities, Earobics,
computers
Technology Resources:
Click the links below to access additional resources used to design this unit:
 Florida Center for Reading Research – www.fcrr.org
 www.pinterest.com
 www.teacherspayteachers.com
 www.havefunteaching.com
 www.abcya.com
 http://www.starfall.com/
 http://wik.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/Phonemic_awareness/
 http://www.proteacher.com/070171.shtml
 http://tc.readingandwritingproject.com/
 http://www.ed.gov/teachers/how/tools/initiative/summerworkshop/valdes/index.html
 http://www.readingresource.net/websitesforkids.html
 http://www.plattscsd.org/oak/smartboard/phonemic.htm
Opportunities for Differentiation:
Learning centers/stations (specific to level of phonemic awareness stage)
Flexible grouping
VAKT modeling
Leveling of sorting activities
Teacher Notes: Phonemic Awareness instruction includes the teaching of: phoneme isolation, phoneme
identity, phoneme categorization, phoneme blending, phoneme segmentation, phoneme deletion, phoneme
addition, and phoneme substitution.