Phonics and Phonemic Awareness

Teaching Phonemic Awareness by Rasinski and Padak
From Phonics to Fluency by Rasinski and Padak

I'm really glad I got to read these two articles because they are helping me open my eyes to realize there is so much more to phonic that I had at first realized. The idea of learning to read always fascinated me, so it's exciting learning all of the ins and outs that go along with what a student really is observing as he or she continues to work on phonics and phonemic awareness. There are so many different activities you can do to work on all of the components you want to hit on, and I think the article highlights that well. This is important because reading, from what I've seen and experienced, is something that should be fun and engaging for children. If it's not, they'll grow to resent it, especially if they feel themselves falling behind or not grasping content. This feeling only gets harder and harder to shake as they grow older. That is why engaging these phonemic components in a positive way at a young age is crucial for reading success in students. I loved how the articles discussed a "common language" throughout phonics and fluency that all teachers, literacy coaches, and to an extent students all share. This is a great way to look at phonics as a pre-service teacher; it only highlights the idea that learning the aspects of phonic and phonemic awareness is crucial at this point in our studies so that we can continue to build off a strong base of literacy teaching.