Teaching Phonemic Awareness to Older Students

It is often assumed by middle and high school teachers that their students will enter their classroom with the fundamental skills of phonemic awareness. In reality, some students struggle with reading due to the lacking of these fundamental skills. It is vital that teachers take charge and provide explicit and systematic instruction that will fill the gaps that students have in phonemic awareness entering their classroom. 

Phonemic awareness is the ability to identify and manipulate individual sounds in spoken words. This is a very important skill for all readers. In addition to the simple sources of instruction that is used in early elementary school, teachers can find other sources to make the support more meaningful for older students. The use of Hip-Hop music can be engaging for students and also help the teacher to better teach these concepts. Using rhyme and alliteration within Hip-Hop music can teach students to discriminate and manipulate phonemes. A follow-up activity may include students actually writing their own song or verse using rhyme or alliteration. It is necessary for teachers to preview specific Hip-Hop songs to assure it can be helpful for the specific skill being taught and is school-appropriate/not offensive. 

The additional support provided in an intervention for students lacking in phonemic awareness skills is very important for any student, regardless of age. It is very likely that if a student is lacking these fundamental skills, that the student is a struggling reader. In other cases, a student that is lacking the skills but is not a struggling reader would still benefit from this additional support in the long run.