Children should become aware of the building blocks of spoken language. They need to understand that sentences are made up of strings of separate words. They should become comfortable in hearing and creating rhymes. They should be led to play with the sounds of language until they can pull words apart into syllables, and pull syllables into individual phonemes. A phoneme is the smallest functional unit of speech.
Phonemic awareness is the foundation on which all other reading skills are built.
Given a comfortable familiarity with letters and an awareness of the sounds of phonemes, children are ready to learn about letter-sound correspondence. The most important goal at this first stage is to help children understand that the logic of the alphabetic writing system is built on these correspondences. As children learn specific letter-sound correspondences, they should be challenged to use this knowledge to sound out new words in reading and writing. Making a habit of sounding out unfamiliar words contributes strongly to reading growth, not just for beginners, but for all readers. Children need to understand that sounding out new words can actually be a strategy for helping them unlock pronunciations of words they have never seen before, and can make what they are reading understandable.