Phonemic awareness: When and how much to teach?

Literacy skills of 1st grade children were assessed; one group received instruction in phonemic awareness in kindergarten, while one group did not. Both groups received phonemic awareness instruction during 1st grade. At the beginning of 1st grade, the group with early phonemic awareness training scored higher on phoneme segmentation and had fewer children identified for reading difficulties. By middle of 1st grade, literacy skills of children without the early training were comparable to skills of children with such training in kindergarten. Results suggest that learning phonemic awareness skills during 1st grade supports grade level reading, learning phonemic awareness skills can occur within a short time period, and learning these skills beyond a sufficient level does not necessarily result in improved oral reading fluency.