February 29 2024- Educators nationwide have adopted the “science of reading” in classrooms, but controversies persist in the reading wars, particularly regarding phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness involves teaching children to break down words into individual letter sounds and then combine them. For example, a lesson might ask students how many sounds are in the word “cat” (three: “k,” “a,” and “t”). The class then blends these sounds to reconstruct the word. English’s 26 letters yield 44 phonemes, encompassing unique sounds formed by letter combinations, such as “ch” and “oo.”
