Are your students struggling to decode fluently? Frustrated readers need a boost in one key area: phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness acts like glue, making sure letter sounds stick for a solid foundation in reading. By focusing on phonemic awareness, we empower students to decode fluently, addressing a crucial aspect of reading success. Here are my top 3 phonemic awareness interventions that I am either currently using with my students or have used recently (in no particular order).
Phonemic Awareness Intervention 1: Heggerty
Grades
Preschool – 2nd Grade
Time
Heggerty is a foundational skills curriculum and can be used for Tier instruction. In this setting, a full lesson takes 10-12 minutes.
Heggerty can also be used as a Tier 2 or 3 intervention. In this setting, a full lesson can take 12-20 minutes. The activities are the same but the pacing may include scaffolding, incorporating manipulatives, and additional examples.
Description
Heggerty has three levels available: preschool, kindergarten, and primary. (there are also Spanish versions)
Each level has 35 lessons and each lesson has 10 components. It is meant to be used daily and has weekly lessons broken down by day of the week.
The eight phonemic awareness components are: rhyming, onset fluency, blending, identifying sounds, segmenting, adding phonemes, deleting phonemes, and substituting phonemes.
The two additional components are letter naming and language awareness
Most sections include hand motions and visual supports to scaffold instruction for learners.
Materials
Teacher Materials: Manual (click here to check out a sample lesson)
Student Materials: None
I have created a slide deck that goes along with each of the Primary (1st Grade) Lessons. They are a great visual to keep students engaged and provide a visual prompt for what the task is asking.
Assessments/Progress Monitoring
Heggerty’s website has comprehensive assessments and resources.
The assessments are optional, but provide important information on students. I use the assessments to get a baseline on the student’s skills and then reassess after time to show progress. Heggerty also provides progress monitoring assessments.
These assessments can also help identify skill areas to target. For example, if a student is strong with rhyming but struggling with blending you can move at a faster pace during rhyming and spend more time (and possibly provide more support) with blending.
You can download assessments and additional resources on Heggerty’s website.
Cost
The manual is $89.99.
Other bundle options include the manual plus access to digital resources and decodables.
Phonemic Awareness Intervention 2: Bridge the Gap
Grades
2nd Grade and Above
Time
5-7 minutes
Description
Bridge the Gap is made by the Heggerty company and is a series of systematic phonemic awareness intervention lessons.
Lesson Overview
Bridge the Gap is broken down into 3 main parts of increasing difficulty.
Part 1 focuses on phoneme isolation and targets the skills of finding the initial, final, and medial phonemes.
Part 2 focuses on blending and segmenting and targets blending and then segmenting. Both areas start with syllables and move to phonemes (sounds).
Part 3, the most advanced, focuses on phoneme manipulation which includes adding, deleting then substituting phonemes.
Each skill has anchor lessons for explicit teaching and incorporates the I do, we do, you do method for skill practice. Like Heggerty, it incorporates hand motions as a learning scaffold.
Assessments/Progress Monitoring
Bridge the Gap has a comprehensive placement assessment that identifies student skills gaps. This information provides you with a starting point for your intervention.
This assessment is also a useful tool for progress monitoring.
Phonemic Awareness Intervention 3: Equipped for Reading Success
Grades
K-12
Time
1-5 minutes
Description
Equipped for Reading Success is a book written by Dr. David Kilpatrick. It is broken up into three main sections: What Needs to Be Done (understanding phonemic awareness), How to Do It (literal how to), and Training Exercises.
The Training Exercise section has over 100 pages of leveled phonemic awareness exercises.
Lesson Overview
Equipped for Reading Success differs from the other programs in that it does not offer a lesson plan. The explicit teaching is up to you (more on that in the next blog post). There is a placement assessment that determines what level to work on with your students.
The activities are meant to be completed in one minute, but you may need more time based on our students and their automaticity.
Materials
Teacher Materials: manual
Student Materials: none
When beginning a new skill, students may need explicit instruction and modeling to understand what they are being asked to do. Here are Google Slides that provide the highest level of scaffolding to get students started. There is also a clickable PDF version as well.
Assessments/Progress Monitoring
There is a placement assessment called the PAST (Phonemic Awareness Screening Test) which identifies skill gaps and will tell you where to start.
Cost
The manual is $55.00
Comparison
| Heggerty | Bridge the Gap | Reading Success | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Grade | K-2 | 2nd and above | K-12 |
| Time | 12 minutes | 8 minutes | < 5 minutes |
| Materials | teacher manual only | teacher manual only | teacher manual only |
| Assessments | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Cost | $89.99 | $69.99 | $55.00 |
| Phoneme Isolation | ✅ | ✅ | |
| Blending and Segmenting | ✅ | ✅ | |
| Phoneme Manipulation | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
Summary
All of these interventions are research-based and excellent resources. Heggerty is a Tier 1 program that I use as an intervention for students who are not ready to attach sound to print (phonics). Typically these students are in kindergarten and first grade and phonemic awareness activities are the only skill we cover in our group.
I use Bridge the Gap and Equipped for Reading Success as a component of phonics interventions (post on that coming soon). These phonemic awareness interventions are the best way to address specific skill gaps. We start each reading group by addressing these skills (various levels of phoneme manipulation) and then move into other print/text-based skills.
You can’t go wrong with any of these amazing phonemic awareness interventions!
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