 I want to hear you do this before you say it, okay? I'm Rachel Reid and I'm a speech language pathologist at Genesis Early Learning. Let's start on a stick! Phonemic awareness is the awareness of the parts of speech. So, for example, being aware that words are made up of syllables or that words are made up of different sounds. That word's rhyme. Those kinds of concepts are phonemic awareness. Good job! It can be tricky at times because it's kind of a cognitive abstract concept for kids. So we try to make it visual a lot of times. So, for example, in the class we were working on the sound. So we used a visual gesture inside a snake and tried to make it visual for the children. Also, when we were trying to work on syllable awareness, we clapped out the syllables. So we used our bodies to be aware of the different parts of words. And we also visually represented the syllables with sticks or with blocks to help the children. Oh, that's crazy! For sound awareness, we were playing with a bunch of objects that I had gathered that start with the sound. So we had a straw and a snake and a strawberry, lots of different things that we gathered. And then we highlighted the sound as they said it. So we said, look, a snake! And then the children had a chance to practice the word too, and they would say, oh, a snake! And we all focused on using our sound. We called it our sound or our snake sound. Every object as we pulled it out just repeated that sound over and over again for the children. Get your clapping hands ready? The second area for phonemic awareness was syllable awareness. So we were reading the story, the Very Hungry Caterpillar. As we came across the different foods that the caterpillar was eating, we clapped out each of the foods to become aware of the syllables in the fruit. So when the Very Hungry Caterpillar ate an apple, then we said, OK. Apple, let's clap it out. And we all clapped together, apple. And discovered there were two parts to that word. There was one little girl we were working on the F sound. And so we played in the kitchen together, so very natural play environment. I was using the strategy Focus Practice. So I was attempting to highlight the F sound for her as many times as I could during that play time. So Focus Practice is a strategy where the whole goal is repetition. We were flipping pancakes. And as we flipped them, we said, flip, flip, flip, flip, flip. So we're practicing over and over that sound. So when you work broad-based, you target the whole class. And every child is benefiting. Also, we find when we pull children out and work with them one-on-one to the side, they might not have carryover into other environments. Whereas if we work in the classroom and work with all the children together, their skills are already transferring. They're already in the environment where they need to use their skills.