Phonemic Awareness Teacher Task Cards: Keep Me On Track

These teacher task cards are the perfect phonemic awareness activities, right at your fingertips whenever you need them! There are cards for every skill and they are also differentiated for different levels!

Phonemic awareness activities for kindergarten, first grade, and intervention! These teacher task cards will help you make the most of every classroom moment. Use them during small groups, whole group, one-on-one, in tutoring, or during class transitions to make sure that your students are building phonemic awareness every day!

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Phonemic Awareness Teacher Task Cards

WHY PHONEMIC AWARENESS?

I remember my “Teaching Reading” professor in graduate school. She was passionate about phonemic awareness, and there were two things she drilled into our heads.

Phonemic awareness can be done in the dark.
Phonemic awareness is one of the best predictors of learning to read. (This makes it SUPER important!)

I’m also pretty sure she asked us to name these two facts at the beginning, middle, and end of every class session. In fact, she even made us order copies of reports from the National Reading Panel for “pleasure reading.” But guess what? It’s now seven years later, and I haven’t forgotten about the importance of phonemic awareness.

As I teach reading intervention, I hear her voice in my head. (Note: I didn’t say that I hear random voices in my head; I just remember her. 😉 ) I’m constantly reminded of one thing: I need to give my students ample opportunities to learn and practice phonemic awareness skills on a daily basis. With only 20-30 minutes per session, I have to make the most of every minute. I could remember all of the skills in my head and keep track of who has already learned what, or I could create a program to keep me on track. Thus, Phonemic Awareness Teacher Task Cards were born!

These task cards are for the teacher only. Why? Because phonemic awareness can be done in the dark! Letters are not required in building phonemic awareness skills. (Save the letters for phonics.) Your students build phonemic awareness skills by listening and speaking. So for once, don’t even worry about making copies for your students. These cards are just for you!

THE PHONEMIC AWARENESS ACTIVITIES

I took all of the phonemic awareness skills and created activities for them. They range from begining to advanced so that they can be used with kindergarteners, first graders, second graders, and any students struggling to read and write (spell).

Because phonemic awareness instruction should be systematic and explicit, I “scripted” each skill introduction and each set of student directions. That’s right. All you have to do is read it aloud to your students! You’ll also model a “sample” activity so that your students know just what to do (also scripted).

Ready for more? Turn the page (or card). You have multiple pages with 5-20 ways to practice that skill!

Skills range from “What’s the first sound you hear in ___?” to phoneme deletion and manipulation. Don’t worry. It’s scaffolded all throughout so that your students will work up to the hard stuff!

SETTING IT UP – ONE AND DONE

Remember how only the teacher needs a set of these task cards? The setup is quick- do it once, and use it for years! If you have a paraprofessional, assistant, or parent volunteers, you can make them each a set too. They can also practice in small groups or one-on-one. I used colored cardstock and binder rings to keep all my task cards together. (Let’s be real; it’s also to make them pretty. 😉 ). [Note: These are affiliate links for your convenience.] I had many of you ask if I put the colored paper in a specific order, and the answer is no. I just randomly threw it in my printer. Since they print four to a page, the same skills will be the same color.

SKILL LEVELS

Last week, I decided to put all of the skills on one giant binder ring and use sticky tabs to track which groups are on which skills. However, if you want to divide the task cards by level, you can use the table of contents below to do so! [Note: This table of contents is clickable in the PDF, but it won’t be here.]

Beginner: Beginning Sound Discrimination through Alliterations
Intermediate: Onset and Rime through Segmenting Phonemes
Advanced: Deleting With Compound Words through Ending Phoneme Substitution

I hope these phonemic awareness teacher task cards make as much of a difference in your classroom has they have in ours! May you hear voices in your head reminding you how important phonemic awareness is to your students. And also always remember that it can be done in the dark. 😉