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Difference Between Phonemic Awareness vs. Phonics in Preschool

Know a clear difference and get your child to enroll in the academy Corpus Christi, Texas, to learn.

By Annapolis Christian AcademyPublished 3 years ago 4 min read
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The National Reading Panel (NRP) in 2000 identified five components for effective child literacy order: phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. They concluded phonemic awareness and phonic information to be increased in primary grades. Academy Corpus Christi Texas also included teaching their children.

These words are often used interchangeably and confused. However, they are essential to know that they are not the same thing. Phonics is a creating learning block that is used to read and write and act as a crucial part of early childhood literacy. Likewise, phonemic sounds like the same thing, but distinctions are there.

You can put it simply; phonics involves using eyes and ears, while phonemic awareness involves using ears.

What is phonemic awareness?

Phonemic awareness is the recognition of spoken words made up of individual sounds called phonemes. It is oral and auditory and focuses on the sounds in words. It is often confused with phonics, but phonemic does not involve print or letter names.

The instruction provides children with the understanding that words they hear in oral language are not whole units but sounds that make up a word. Once children know, they can isolate, blend and segment those sounds. These abilities are necessary to become a fluent and proficient reader.

The basic skill of blending directly correlates to phonic decoding or sounding out a word. When we blend sounds to make a whole word. The sounds /c/ /a/ /t/ blended together make the word cat. The segment mirrors blending and correlates to encoding or spelling. We take the full word and break it into parts. If we separate the word play, we hear /p/ /l/ /a/ /y/, and you can spell the word once you have sound knowledge (phonics).

What is phonics?

Phonics is visual and auditory. The focus of phonics is on letter-sound relationships. For example, in a Christian preschool in Corpus Christi, Tx, students are taught the letter with combinations representing 44 sounds in the English language.

When students get usually familiar with sounds of letters in print, they can blend those sounds to read words. While in spelling, students hear the word, divide it into sounds, and match the letter or combination to the sound it produces.

For instance, in the word "The" the initial sound /th/ is phonetically correct, and the letter e is saying /u/ is not. Only 25% of text can be predicted, with those function words like "the" and "an."

Phonics vs. Phonemics

It is tough to learn the basics of language. The process of learning words will be built out of letters. They fit together, and it literally means what sets humans apart from animals. Even though our minds are set to learn new things, they are a great leap in a child's mental development. The process children use to bridge that gap depends on phonics and phonemic understanding.

Most adults are familiar with the concept of phonics that involves a relation between words, letters, and their sounds. The instruction will help students to decode words and spell the most common relationships. In addition, it can decipher unknown words that are crucial for learning to read.

The phonemic awareness is kind of similar but not the same. Phonemic awareness means knowing each word that contains a series of sounds. Phonics concentrates on how sounds look in writing, while phonics are written, and phonemic awareness is oral. Students make up sounds before they know the spelling.

Teaching phonics at a Christian Academy

Teaching preschool kids to connect letters with sounds is called phonics instruction. It is the base of early classical Christian education that was taught to make child literacy better. The most beneficial way to learn phonetics is a structured letter and associated with sound. When you use multiple senses, it helps every type of learner.

For example, academy corpus Christi goes for the activity to write a letter in shaving cream by using their fingers while repeating its sound. Leverage the touch, movement, and smell to build a connection between symbol and pronunciation.

Once they learn each letter, they are ready to move on to standard blends such as "ch" or "sh" used together.

Bringing phonemic awareness and phonics instruction Together

While both are not the same thing but they do have reciprocal relationships. We don’t have to wait for this awareness to be built completely before beginning phonics instruction. Instead, our educators will help children to understand the connection between phonics and phonemic awareness better.

Wrapping up:

An easy-to-remember difference is a phonemic awareness focused only on the sound of a word. The phonic focuses on the relationship between sounds and letters.

Phonics is visual, while phonemic awareness is oral. Both are effective tools that help children to understand the symbols along with sounds that create the alphabet. Those letters build words.

With the help of an Academy Corpus Christi, Texas, you can develop your child into a good reader and writer from an early age by emphasizing both.

While both are not the same thing but they do have reciprocal relationships. We don’t have to wait for this awareness to be built completely before beginning phonics instruction. Instead, our educators will help children to understand the connection between phonics and phonemic awareness better.

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Annapolis Christian Academy

Annapolis Christian Academy - Best Academy Corpus Christi Texas

Visit: http://annapolischristianacademy.com/

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