Phonemic Awareness is the ability to hear, identify and manipulate sounds in a word. All 5 levels of the Phonemic Awareness Inventory need to be mastered in order to achieve academic success. Phonemic awareness is the foundation for reading, spelling and math. It impacts all aspects of learning.

Phonemic Awareness Inventory 

Level 1

• Whole Word Discrimination –  can the child hear if two words are the same?
• Rhyming Words- Recognition –  can the child identify if two words rhyme?
• Rhyming Word- Application – can the child rhyme words?
• Syllable Counting – can the child determine how many syllables he hears in a word?

Level 2

• Syllable Segmentation – can the child repeat words slowly breaking the word into syllables?
• Oral Synthesis- Blending Speech Sounds if the word is broken into sounds can the child identify the word?

Level 3

• Approximation – does the child hear a given sound in the beginning, middle or end of the word?
• Phonemic Isolation – can the child identify the sound that he hears in the beginning, middle or end of the word?

Level 4

• Segmentation – can the child separate the word into sounds?

Level 5

• Phonemic Deletion – can the child say the word then say it by leaving off the beginning or end sound?
• Phonemic Substitution – can the child replace the first sound in the word with a given sound and tell you what the new word is? Repeat by asking the child to substitute middle and end sounds.