Hey there! I was just working with a first-grade teacher last week who asked me, “Am I supposed to keep letters completely separate when I teach phonemic awareness? I feel like my kids are ready for more, but my curriculum guide says to wait.” Maybe you’ve wondered about teaching letters and sounds too?
Let me tell you, this question comes up in almost every coaching session I have with K-1 teachers. And I get it – we’ve all heard different advice about teaching letters and sounds. Some of us were taught to keep phonemic awareness completely separate from phonics, while others were encouraged to blend them from day one. No wonder we’re confused!
What Research Really Says (Without the Academic Jargon)
Here’s something that might surprise you: Research actually suggests introducing letters sooner rather than later when teaching letters and sounds. When I first learned this, it was a bit of an “oh!” moment for me too.
The National Reading Panel found that when teachers connected sounds to letters during phonemic awareness instruction, students picked up these skills faster than when the letters were kept out of the picture. Even better? This approach led to stronger reading outcomes down the road.
I think about it like teaching a child to ride a bike. Sure, we could spend weeks practicing just the pedaling motion while sitting on the grass. But at some point, we need to put it all together – the pedaling, the balancing, the steering – for real biking to happen. Teaching letters and sounds works similarly. There’s value in some isolated practice, but the real magic happens when we help kids connect what they hear with what they see on the page.
Monday Morning Practical: Where Do I Start?
So what does this mean for your phonemic awareness lesson tomorrow morning? Here’s how I’d approach teaching letters and sounds with your students:
Start by making sure they have a solid awareness of at least a few phonemes. Researcher Susan Brady suggests this is your green light to begin introducing letters. For example, once your students can reliably identify the /m/ sound in words like “mom” and “mug,” it’s time to show them what that /m/ looks like on paper.
Try this simple routine I’ve seen work in dozens of classrooms:
- Practice hearing and saying the target sound in isolation
- Introduce the letter that represents that sound (show it, name it)
- Practice blending words with that sound (e.g., /m/ /a/ /p/ = map)
- Write the word together, connecting each sound to its letter
- Read a decodable text that highlights this sound-letter connection
Phonemic awareness and phonics are still two separate skills, but this routine shows how they can work together within the same lesson. When I’m working with my intervention students, we usually start our lesson with about 5-6 words that we orally blend and 5-6 words that we orally segment. For the kids, this feels kind of like a warm-up. This helps them to still build oral skills blending and segmenting which is especially important for spelling when they don’t necessarily have the word in front of them.
As soon as we start showing letters, we are technically practicing phonics. But, when we make teaching letters and sounds all part of the same lesson, our students get to see how these skills overlap and work together. When we fluidly move between phonemic awareness and phonics, our students learn to be flexible as well.
