phonemic awareness

**Phonemic Awareness**
Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate the individual sounds-called phonemes-in spoken words. It is a critical foundational skill for learning to read and spell, enabling children to understand how sounds form words. This skill involves tasks such as segmenting words into phonemes, blending phonemes to make words, and recognizing rhymes and alliteration. Developing strong phonemic awareness supports reading fluency, decoding, and overall literacy success.