Develop phonological awareness skills as a foundation for learning sound-symbol relationships.

Phonological awareness is the ability to detect and manipulate the sounds in words independent of word meaning. It improves school readiness skills and can be taught before children learn to read.

Teachers can help preschool children, ages 3 to 5, by providing phonological awareness instruction that is systematic and explicit, integrated into daily activities, including planned individual and group instructional sessions, and tailored to children's learning needs at all developmental levels. Students benefit when teachers use clear pronunciation of sounds and provide feedback to correct errors, including having children produce correct responses. Phonological awareness instruction can be combined with letter knowledge training to help children learn alphabet letters and make the explicit link between letters and sounds, which facilitates the use of letter-sound knowledge to read and build words. Students who develop these critical skills are better prepared for learning how to read.