Phonemic awareness is the set of skills that allows learners to hear separate sounds and parts within words, learn relationships between sounds and manipulate phonemes. Proficiency in phonemic awareness skills sets the stage for more complex decoding of written language, such as sounding out unfamiliar words. An informal inventory of phonemic awareness skills should include demonstration of hearing differences between words, rhyming, counting and isolating sounds and syllables, and manipulating initial, final and medial sounds. Ask the child to state whether pairs of spoken words are the same or different, to generate rhymes for common words, to say words one sound or syllable at a time and to omit, add or substitute sounds on request.
Sound-symbol correspondence, the understanding that letters work together to make the sounds that we hear in words, should also be developing in the preschool and early elementary years. These skills are the foundation for later phonics instruction. Check sound-symbol correspondence with activities such as showing letters and having the child give the corresponding primary sound for consonants and the long and short vowel sounds. It is also important for the student to isolate and name the letters making initial, final and medial sounds in simple words with three to four phonemes.
Sight words are the very common words that make up over 60 percent of basic reading tasks. Many are not easily decoded because they do not follow the common phonics rules. They need to be memorized to facilitate fluent reading. Assess sight word knowledge by having young children read the words from a sight word list in isolation. Use one of the standard sight word lists, such as the Dolch list, Fry's 1000 Instant Words or Essential Sight Words. Count a word as correctly read if it is identified instantly with no hesitation, "sounding out" or corrections.
Sequencing is another important readiness skill for early literacy. It is important that readers hear and reproduce sequences of letters accurately when they are decoding words. Assess sequencing by having the student put items in order of size or other attribute, by having the child repeat series of numbers, letters and words, and by evaluating how well the student can retell familiar stories.
It is easier to decode familiar words than unfamiliar ones, so it is important for beginning readers to have sound vocabularies. Word knowledge is built by exposure and usage, so the more words a child hears and is encouraged to use, the more words he will be prepared to read when the time comes. Assess vocabulary development by recording and analyzing the child's conversation on several different occasions. One simple method of analysis is to count the number of words and the number of syllables in the sample. Divide the syllables by the number of words. This figure will reveal the average length of the words being used and assumes that longer words are at a higher level of learning than shorter words.