Phonemic Awareness Cheat Chart

This school year, I'm receiving training as a Teacher Development Leader. It's a program our school put in place to ensure everyone has a mentor they can reach out to. It's served as a helpful layer of support for a very big school.

As part of the program, I'm working with a first year special educator. She is simply AMAZING and it's a pleasure to be her “TDL.” We meet once a week for a quick drop-in observation and check-in for feedback.

She's very intentional about maximizing the time she has with her students while also supporting their needs when working with other peers. One things she's learned VERY quickly – sometimes you have to grab the teachable moments as they come up!

One area she wanted to learn more about was phonemic awareness. Specifically how to “fit it all in” during small group reading groups. There's always so much to do!

I created this reference chart to tuck into a reading intervention binder or add to a clipboard for fast access. You can gain SO much information from these little tasks – if students are struggling with decoding (phonics), you may want to troubleshoot with phonemic awareness:

• Are they hearing the difference between sounds?
• Can they match sounds that are the same?
• Are they able to segment (break down) the phonemes in a spoken word?

Print one page per student and use as a progress monitoring page during small groups. This Phonemic Awareness Cheat Chart makes it easy to see the “big picture” on what has been mastered and what needs to be focused on next.