Explicit teaching of phonemic awareness

Segmenting words into syllables

Segmenting spoken words into syllables is the most simple phonological awareness skill. It involves breaking words into chunks or beats and each beat will contain a vowel sound e.g. the word big contains one syllable, fish/ing contains two, and hip/po/pot/a/mus contains five.

Counting syllables –  How many syllables in teddy?

Segmenting 3-4 syllables –  Say the syllables in Samantha. ‘Sa-man-tha’

Segmenting unfamiliar, multi-syllable words – Say the syllables in obfuscate. ‘Ob-fus-cate’ or, Say the syllables in reminiscent. ‘Rem-in-is-cent’