A student who has mastered the skill of phonemic awareness along the phonological awareness continuum is best prepared to begin explicit phonics instruction.
Phonological awareness is the ability to recognize and manipulate spoken language sounds, with phonemic awareness being the most advanced skill. It involves identifying individual sounds, blending them, segmenting them, and changing them to create new words. Mastering phonemic awareness provides a solid foundation for explicit phonics instruction, which teaches the relationship between spoken language sounds and letter combinations. This helps students decode, read, and spell words more accurately, enabling them to apply letter-sound correspondences, decode unfamiliar words, read fluently, and develop effective spelling strategies.