Phonemic awareness is a pre-reading skill. It includes:

• Understanding that letters have a shape, a name, and a sound

• Knowledge that reading flows from left to right direction

• Knowing that words are made of letters and syllables

• Knowing that words have "sound elements" or phonemes

• Being able to work with phonemes by:

• Playing rhyming games

• Saying words that end the same

• Saying words that start with the same sound

• Substituting sounds within words

• Making silly words that rhyme