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Phonological awareness is awareness of the sound structure of words (syllables, rhyming, speech sounds etc). Phonemic awareness is a subset of phonological awareness, and refers to awareness of individual speech sounds (phonemes).

The main reason to become aware of the structure of spoken words is to represent them with letters, so many programs teach phonemic awareness in the presence of letters/spellings. However, some children get very focussed on letters and find thinking about sounds very hard unless the letters are removed. Also, since oral-only phonemic awareness activities require no printed materials, they can be presented very efficiently to classes in short bursts.

• Auburn University has ideas here and here
• Equipped for Reading Success by David Kilpatrick (US) contains many deletion and substitution “One Minute Activities”, and is now available in Australia from Silvereye and Seelect Educational Supplies. Blog posts about his Reading in the Rockies videos are here, here and here. In  August 2019 Dr Kilpatrick will tour Australia giving seminars, see the LDA website for details and to register.
• The Five From Five website has a phonemic awareness page.
• The Florida Centre for Reading Research VPK Learning Centre has free, downloadable phonological awareness activities.
• Gail Gillon’s great 2018 textbook Phonological Awareness is available in Australia from Silvereye, and her free resources are available on the Canterbury University website.
• The Heggarty Phonemic Awareness curriculum (US) is available in Australia from Seelect Educational Supplies, or the Qld Association of State School Principals. You can watch videos of teachers using this curriculum here.
• The Intensive Phonological Awareness Program by C. Melanie Schuele and Naomi D. Murphy is available in Australia from Silvereye.
• Launch into Reading Success by Lorna Bennett & Pamela Ottley (US)
• Lindamood Auditory Discrimination in Depth / Phoneme Sequencing Program (US)
• Dr Mary Dahlgren’s Kid Lips and other Tools 4 Reading (US), now available in an Australian version.
• Dr Pam Kastner’s 2-hour talk for the US Reading League on “Beyond Blending and Segmenting: Advanced Phonological Awareness” is both excellent and free.
• Phonological Awareness Skills Program by Jerome Rosner (US)
• Phonological Awareness Training for Reading 2nd Edition (US)
• Shanna Bradfield is a US teacher who has created a padlet of free phonemic awareness resources
• Some of the Preschool University apps (US) target PA in the absence of letters.
• The Reading Rockets website (US) has lots of ideas and links
• Road to the Code by Benita Blackman (US)
• SPELD SA Phonemic Awareness tasks (Aus)

This page is still under construction @ March 2019, but anyway, that’s a start.