Phonological awareness is both a listening skill and a reading skill. Students must be able to make a connection between printed letters and words and their sounds in order to read. For students to make this connection, they must be able to equate the individual sound of a letter with its print partner, sometimes referred to as the alphabet principle. Having an alphabet posted in your room to refer to during instruction enhances students understanding of the alphabet principle because they are able to visually see a letter as they are learning the sounds in which the letter makes.
Primary students come to school with varying abilities and understandings of phonics, but all students can say words long before they can read words. By using picture flashcards of familiar objects, teachers can begin to show students the relationship between how they say words and the letters that make up the words. Show students a picture of a common animal, such as a dog. Ask students to state the sound they hear at the beginning of the word and write it on the board. Repeat this process for the second and third letters and write them on the board to spell "dog." Students can then begin to match pictures that begin with the same letter sounds. This is a precursor to being able to recognize sight words, or words students can recognize from sight without really "reading" them.
Once students have demonstrated an ability to recognize a picture and its letter sounds, they are ready to begin using sight words for in-depth exploration of words. Sight words are short words that commonly appear in early reading material, such as "and," "after," "your" and "there." Because they appear so frequently and students are familiar with them, they can be used to teach the complexities of blending and segmenting. Teachers can segment the words by individual letters, in addition to showing any combination of letters that make their own unique sounds. The earliest books for primary students consist solely of sight words, such as "Dick and Jane."
Once students have been exposed to the components of phonemic awareness, they can practice each of the skills using nursery rhymes. Nursery rhymes are an effective tool because they are short, easy to remember and engaging to students. Nursery rhymes can also be used to teach specific skills, as well. For example, the nursery rhyme "Hey Diddle Diddle" could be used to teach rhyming words while the rhyme "Little Miss Muffet" could be used to teach ending sounds.