What is the difference?
Phonics
What is it?
Phonics is the relationship between letters and sounds. It involves how speech sounds correspond to written letters or letter combinations. ***Phonics involves the ears and eyes.***
Why is phonics important?
The majority of the information conveyed by letters concerns sounds. Children need to be able to connect letter sounds and blends together in order to make a word. Reading fluently is so important for all students in order to be successful readers. Fluency cannot take place until children are able to read accurately, and this depends on the accurate use of the information conveyed by letters. Skilled, fluent readers do not guess, they read.
Phonics instruction should begin by teaching students to convert letters to sounds, then blending the sounds into words. As the children progress, pairs or groups of letters are then taught, then blending those sounds into words. Finally, being taught the rules and their exceptions ("special" rules: e.g., Silent e, Vowel Team, etc.) should be taught. Although, as you are teaching the children blends, you may find that you are already teaching them a few rules.
Phonemic Awareness
What is it?
Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate the sounds in spoken words and understanding that spoken words and syllables are made up of sequences of speech sounds. Phonemic awareness does not involve words in print. ***Phonemic awareness involves the ears.***Phonemic awareness is the understanding that words are made up of phonemes or individual units of sound that influence the meaning of the word. What is a phoneme? It is a single "unit" of sound that has a meaning in any language. Phonemes are the basic building blocks for spoken words. In English, there are an infinite number of possible words, but there are only 44 phonemes. To make new words, we simply delete or rearrange the phonemes - pat becomes sat when the phoneme /p/ is replaced with the phoneme /s/, and deleting the phoneme /t/ from tan leaves you with the word an.
Why is phonemic awareness important?
Phonemic awareness improves students' word reading and comprehension. It also helps students to learn to spell. Instruction most benefits children in pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, and first grade. Strong phonemic awareness, when used to segment and blend words helps children to increase their abilities to decode and comprehend what they are reading.
How should phonemic awareness be taught?
When beginning to teach phonemic awareness, it is very important for students to understand that this is not phonics. Beginning at the meta-cognitive level (thinking about one's thinking) the students will be counting the sounds, not the letters, in a word. (What is meta-cognitive? It is the thinking about one's thinking. The processes used to plan, monitor, and assess one's understanding and performance.) When working with a visual learner, it is extremely helpful for the student to use some type of manipulative (e.g., blending card, colored blocks, boxes, etc.) to visually represent words, syllables, or phonemes. For students who are more hands on, kinesthetic learner, tapping, clapping, jumping, hand motions (moving hands together for blending, moving hands apart for segmenting.) can be extremely beneficial for the student.
It is very important for the instruction to be age appropriate and on the level of the child (Tier 3 older students may need to be taught phonemic awareness.)
