Reading Puzzle: Phonemic Awareness, Grades K-3

In her best-selling book, "Teach Them All To Read", Elaine McEwan provides a great discussion of the most current reading research regarding how students learn to read so educators can make informed decisions about instruction. Research about reading has given us insight into the skills on which we need to focus our efforts to improve reading and comprehension. Now we can identify the skills that require reinforcement and intervene with explicit, thoughtful instruction. The activities in "The Reading Puzzle" series will help the teacher accomplish this goal. "The Reading Puzzle" series provides instructional tools teachers can use immediately as part of the reading curriculum. "The Reading Puzzle" series contains 10 books for Kindergarten through Grade 8 centered on the skills identified by the National Reading Panel as critical to reading success.Each of these books in the series helps unlock one piece of the reading puzzle and contains standards-based, ready-to-use activities that can be used to supplement any reading program. The books include: "Phonemic Awareness, Grades K-3"; "Phonics, Grades K-3"; "Vocabulary, Grades K-3"; "Fluency, Grades K-3"; "Comprehension, Grades K-3"; "Word Analysis, Grades 4-8"; "Spelling, Grades 4-8"; "Vocabulary, Grades 4-8"; "Fluency, Grades 4-8"; and, "Comprehension, Grades 4-8". These activity books contain ready-to-use activities that make it easy to put McEwan's highly-successful strategies into practice. The strategies and activities will support struggling readers and enhance existing skill to encourage improvement in all students' reading skills.Phonemic awareness is one of the best indicators that students will successfully develop the necessary reading skills over time. And, it is an essential prerequisite to mastering the sound-spelling correspondences in phonics. The primary objective of this resource is to provide support in the development of phonemic awareness through oral language activities. Students will be invited to chant, play games, sort pictures, and sing. Through these engaging activities, students will learn to hear the sounds that make up words and then begin to play with those sounds by blending, segmenting, and manipulating them.The phonemic awareness skills in this resource are presented in a logical and systematic way. They are divided into five categories: Recognizing Rhymes; Identifying Sounds; Blending Sounds; Segmenting Sounds; and, Manipulating Sounds. The activities address a variety of learning styles. Kinesthetic learners will be able to jump and move. Auditory learners will enjoy listening to the sounds of language. Visual learners will use picture clues to stimulate their minds and memories. Each student will have the opportunity to be successful in the journey toward phonemic awareness.