Phonological Awareness Activities for Primary School

What Is Phonological Awareness — and Why Does It Matter?

Phonological awareness is the ability to recognise and manipulate the sound structures of spoken language. It is an umbrella term that covers a range of skills — from hearing rhymes and clapping syllables, right through to isolating and manipulating individual sounds (phonemes) in words. It is entirely about spoken language; no letters or print are required.

A common source of confusion for teachers is the difference between phonological awareness and phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is a subset of phonological awareness — it refers specifically to the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate individual phonemes (the smallest units of sound). So all phonemic awareness is phonological awareness, but not all phonological awareness is phonemic awareness. The broader term includes skills like rhyme recognition and syllable segmentation, which operate on larger sound units.

Why It Matters for Reading

Research consistently identifies phonological awareness as the strongest predictor of early reading success. Students who can hear and manipulate the sounds in spoken words are better positioned to learn phonics — the system for connecting sounds to written letters. Without a solid foundation in phonological awareness, phonics instruction is far less effective, and spelling development is compromised.

The Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO) identifies phonological awareness as a critical component of effective early literacy instruction, and the Australian Curriculum v9 Foundation English content descriptors explicitly require students to recognise and work with these sound structures.

For a broader understanding of how phonological awareness fits within evidence-based literacy, see our Science of Reading guide. For information on the national assessment that measures students' decoding ability, see our Year 1 Phonics Check page.

Phonological awareness skills develop along a well-established hierarchy — from larger, easier-to-detect sound units down to the smallest, most difficult ones. Effective instruction follows this progression, ensuring students have a secure foundation at each level before moving to the next.

1. Listening and Attention

The foundation of all phonological awareness is the ability to attend to sounds. Before students can work with sounds in words, they need experience listening to and distinguishing environmental sounds, rhythms, and patterns. Activities include listening walks, identifying sounds with eyes closed, and clapping along to rhythms.

2. Word Awareness

Word awareness is the ability to recognise that spoken sentences are made up of individual words. Students practise counting words in a sentence, moving a counter for each word they hear, or tapping the table for each word as a sentence is spoken aloud.

3. Syllable Awareness

Syllable awareness involves hearing and manipulating the syllable units within words. This is typically one of the earliest phonological skills to develop, because syllables are relatively large and easy to detect. Activities include clapping the syllables in names, sorting pictures by syllable count, and breaking compound words into their two parts (sun-flower, bed-room).

4. Rhyme

Rhyme awareness is the ability to recognise and produce words that share the same ending sound pattern. Students learn to identify rhyming pairs (cat/hat, moon/spoon), sort words into rhyming families, and eventually generate their own rhymes. Nursery rhymes, songs, and read-alouds with rhyming text are natural entry points.

5. Onset and Rime

Onset-rime awareness involves splitting a single-syllable word into its onset (the initial consonant or consonant cluster before the vowel) and its rime (the vowel and everything that follows). For example, in the word strip, the onset is /str/ and the rime is /ip/. This skill bridges the gap between syllable-level work and the more demanding phoneme-level tasks.

6. Phoneme Awareness

Phoneme awareness is the most advanced level of phonological awareness. It involves isolating, blending, segmenting, deleting, and substituting individual phonemes. For example: "What is the first sound in fish?" (/f/); "Blend these sounds: /sh/ /i/ /p/" (ship); "Say trap without the /t/" (rap). This is the level most directly connected to reading and spelling, and it is where students often need the most explicit instruction and practice.

Australian Curriculum Alignment

The Australian Curriculum v9 Foundation English requires students to "recognise and generate rhyming words, alliteration patterns, syllables and sounds (phonemes) in spoken words" (AC9EFLY09). This content descriptor spans multiple levels of the phonological awareness hierarchy, reinforcing the importance of teaching across the full continuum.

The following activities are organised by skill level, moving from larger sound units to individual phonemes. Use these as a practical guide for building phonological awareness in your classroom.

Syllable Activities

• Clapping names: Students clap the syllables in their own name and their classmates' names. Extend to topic vocabulary — clap the syllables in kan-ga-roo, croc-o-dile, plat-y-pus
• Syllable sorting: Provide picture cards and have students sort them by syllable count (1 syllable, 2 syllables, 3+ syllables)
• Compound word splitting: Use compound words like sunshine, football, and cupcake. Students break each word into its two parts and then put them back together
• Syllable deletion: "Say rainbow without rain." Students learn to hold a multisyllabic word in memory and remove a part

Rhyme Activities

• Rhyme bingo: Create bingo boards with pictures. Call out a word and students cover the picture that rhymes
• Odd one out: Say three words — two that rhyme and one that does not. Students identify the odd one out (cat, hat, dog → dog)
• Rhyme chains: Start with a word and go around the group, each student adding a rhyming word (cat, hat, mat, bat, sat...)
• Rhyming read-alouds: Pause before a rhyming word in a familiar book and let students predict what comes next

Onset-Rime Activities

• Word family sorting: Provide word cards from different word families (-at, -ig, -op) and have students sort them by rime
• Magnetic letters: Students use magnetic letters on a whiteboard to build words by changing the onset while keeping the rime constant (c-at, b-at, s-at, fl-at)
• Onset-rime matching: Use picture cards where students match an onset sound to a rime card to build a word

Phoneme Activities

• Sound boxes (Elkonin boxes): Draw boxes on a whiteboard or use a template. Students push a counter into each box as they segment a word sound by sound. Start with CVC words (s-i-t = 3 boxes) and progress to words with digraphs and blends
• Sound sorting: Provide picture cards and have students sort by initial sound, final sound, or medial vowel sound
• Phoneme deletion games: "Say snail without the /s/." (nail). "Say stop without the /t/." (sop). This is one of the most challenging phonological awareness tasks
• Blending robots: The teacher says a word in "robot talk" — one sound at a time — and students blend the sounds together to say the word. Start with continuous sounds (/mmm/ /aaa/ /nnn/ → man) before moving to stop sounds

As the complexity increases, introduce CVC words first, then words with consonant digraphs (sh, ch, th), then initial and final blends (st, bl, mp, nd). This progression mirrors the phonics scope and sequence students are learning.

For resources that support students as they connect these sound skills to print, see our Decodable Readers page. For activities that bridge phonological awareness into written spelling, see our Spelling Activities guide.

Signs of Weak Phonological Awareness

Students with weak phonological awareness may show some or all of the following signs:

• Difficulty hearing or producing rhymes
• Struggling to clap syllables accurately
• Inability to identify the first or last sound in a word
• Difficulty blending sounds together to form words
• Guessing at words when reading, rather than decoding
• Poor progress in phonics despite adequate instruction
• Difficulty learning letter-sound correspondences
• Persistent spelling errors that do not reflect phonics patterns taught

The Connection to Reading Difficulties and Dyslexia

Weak phonological awareness is the core deficit in most cases of dyslexia. Research consistently shows that students with dyslexia have specific difficulty processing the sound structure of language — particularly at the phoneme level. This is not a vision problem or an issue with intelligence; it is a language-processing difference that makes it harder to hear, hold, and manipulate the individual sounds in words.

Early identification is critical. Students who receive targeted phonological awareness intervention in Foundation and Year 1 have significantly better outcomes than those who are not identified until later years.

When to Refer to a Speech Pathologist

If a student is not making progress despite explicit, systematic phonological awareness instruction, consider a referral to a speech pathologist. This is particularly important if the student also has difficulties with:

• Spoken language (vocabulary, sentence structure, following instructions)
• Producing speech sounds clearly
• Remembering and repeating sequences of sounds or words

Some students may have Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) — a condition that affects the ability to learn and use language, and which frequently co-occurs with reading difficulties. For more information, see our Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) page.

For broader strategies to support students with learning difficulties in the classroom, see our Learning Difficulties Strategies guide.

Intervention Strategies

Effective intervention for weak phonological awareness includes:

• Explicit teaching: Do not assume students will "pick up" phonological awareness through exposure. Teach each skill directly, with modelling, guided practice, and independent practice
• Multi-sensory approaches: Use manipulatives (counters, blocks, magnetic letters), body movements (clapping, tapping, jumping), and visual supports alongside auditory activities
• Increased intensity: Move from whole-class instruction to small-group (3–5 students) and, if needed, one-on-one sessions. Aim for daily practice — short, frequent sessions (10–15 minutes) are more effective than longer, less frequent ones
• Progress monitoring: Regularly assess whether students are making progress. If not, adjust the intensity or approach

The AERO practice guides provide detailed, evidence-based guidance for Australian teachers on how to identify and support students who are struggling.