Florida Department of Education
Phonemic Awareness
Build your library of strategies and activities for teaching phonemic awareness with the ideas provided in this resource. Described here are five different activities to try out with your class.
Florida Center for Reading Research
Phoneme Challenge
This phonemic awareness game is very similar to the classic card game war; partners divide picture cards, each taking half (included). They place one card face-up at a time and segment the phonemes aloud. Whoever has the most phonemes...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Phonemic Awareness: Phoneme Segmenting and Blending, Break and Make
Young learners build phonemic awareness and strong phoneme blending skills. Pairs guess the image on the card based on the word segment sounds given by blending what they hear.
Florida Center for Reading Research
Phonemic Awareness: Phoneme Segmenting, The Phoneme Game
Early readers play a board game to practice segmenting phonemes. Players determine how many spaces to move by choosing a picture, saying the object's name on the card, then counting the phonemes they say.
Florida Center for Reading Research
Phonological Awareness: Rhyme, Rhyme Memory Match
Young scholars play a memory-matching game to practice recognizing rhyming words and sounds. With picture cards, they flip over two cards and say the pictures' names. If the pair make a rhyming match, the learner keeps the cards. The...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Phonological Awareness: Phoneme Isolating, Move and Tell
Build phonological awareness with this fun game focused on isolating and identifying medial phonemes. This game board contains an image on each square; when the child lands on a square, they must say the medial sound of the word they...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Phonological Awareness: Phoneme Matching, Final Phoneme Pie
Words are interesting things—you can change them by adding or subtracting phonemes. Here, emergent readers change the pictures on their phoneme pie by removing or adding various final phonemes. A fun way to build phonetic competency!
Florida Center for Reading Research
Rhyming A-LOT-OH!
Rhymes are a great way to help your scholars with phonemic awareness and word relationships. Kids work with partners to match cards from a stack to their rhyming counterparts on a game board. There are six different boards, so this will...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Phonological Awareness: Phoneme Segmenting, The Sound Game
Pre-readers get a better understanding of phoneme segmenting and counting by playing a board game. They pick an image card from the stack, say the name of the object, break the word down into segments, then move their piece that number...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Phonological Awareness: Rhyme, Rhyming Game
Scholars practice their rhyming skills with a game. Players roll dice to move along the board game, stopping to rhyme words and find a match.
Florida Center for Reading Research
Phonological Awareness: Onset and Rime, Quick Pick
What does it begin with? In this engaging phonics game, small groups study onset and rime using picture cards. Groups take turns as one player draws three cards from an overturned pile, placing them face-up on the table. They silently...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Phonological Awareness: Phoneme Matching, Medial Match
Early readers get together and match medial phonemes. They take turns picking picture cards from a pile; they say each word, then determine whether the pair has matching medial sounds.
Florida Center for Reading Research
Phonological Awareness: Phoneme Matching, Final Phoneme Memory
Try to match the final sounds in this memory game! Learners place all 24 cards upside down and take turns flipping them to see if the final phonemes match. If they do, remove them; if not, put them back. Partners play until all cards...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Phonological Awareness: Phoneme Matching, Medial Phoneme Dominoes
Matching medial phonemes can be as easy as playing a game of dominoes! These dominoes contain pictures of items children can say. As they say each word aloud, they work to match the medial sound to one on an adjacent card. Just like real...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Phonological Awareness: Phoneme Matching, Phoneme Go Fish
Go fishing for initial sounds with this engaging phoneme game! Similar to the card game Go Fish, pairs use picture cards and try to match initial sounds. They set aside any pictures that are a match and ask their partner for specific...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Phonics: Letter-Sound Correspondence, Letter-Sound Pyramid
This fun game is a way to help your littlest learners build strong phonological awareness. Scholars equipped with letter triangles, a stack of picture cards, and counters choose a picture card, say the name of the image, and attempt to...
Achieve3000
Discriminating Phonemes
Develop the fluency of beginning readers one sound at a time with this phonemic awareness lesson plan. Through a series of whole-class instruction, independent practice, and collaborative learning activities, children practice...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Phoneme Feud
This is a phoneme feud! A literacy game that is very similar to the classic card game War! has partners challenging each other for the most phonemes. They place one picture card face-up at a time and segment the phonemes aloud. Whoever...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Word Blender
Little learners will love being able to blend sounds together to make words. This game provides eight onsets and eight rimes that can be used to mix and match to sound out words. This activity is to be completed in pairs and is a great...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Phonological Awareness - Phoneme Segmenting and Blending, Treasure Chest
Working in pairs, scholars use picture cards to practice segmenting words into phonemes and blending phonemes into words. When a peer answers correctly they place a penny in a treasure chest. Incorrect responses make the card go back in...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Phonics: Letter-Sound Correspondence, Words Around Us Memory Game
Scholars employ memory and letter-sound skills like the classic game Concentration to succeed at this literacy game. Partners choose from rows of upside-down cards, trying to match letters to images with the corresponding initial sound.
Florida Center for Reading Research
Phonological Awareness: Onset and Rime, Guessing Game
An activity challenges scholars to show what they know about onset and rime. Learners choose from a stack of picture cards and give onset and rhyming clues to see if their partners can guess the word they are holding.
Florida Center for Reading Research
Drop and Say
This neat idea gets kids to use phonics and puzzle-solving skills. Pairs take turns picking picture cards from a pile, say the name of the object on the card, drop a letter to turn that word into a new word, then look for the new word on...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Final Phoneme Pyramid
Little learners identify final phonemes found in various words. They play a game where they pick a card, say the name of the object on the card, identify the final phoneme, then match it to an image with the same final phoneme. Whoever...