Still under construction… (The high quality, colorful worksheets designed to engage children in fun and stimulating phonics and phonemic awareness activities are available to be purchased here along with the Children Learning Reading Program. The low quality Phoneme Isolation worksheets: Coming Soon)

Worksheets For Phoneme Addition And Deletion Activities

You now know why Jim Yang’s Children Learning Reading program is so powerful and how it can help children as young as 2 years old learn how to read. The development of a child’s phonemic awareness is a fundamental of the course and this will lay the foundation for proficient reading in the future.

As your child develops their phonemic awareness skills they will be able to decode words and manipulate them by adding or deleting specific phonemes to make completely different words. This will really extend their learning and we can offer you high quality worksheets alongside the Children Learning Reading program that are fun to use and will stimulate your child.

Why Is It Important For Your Child To Add And Delete Phonemes?

The first thing to say here is that phoneme addition and deletion has nothing to do with maths! It is a very important part of phonemic awareness development. Your child needs to be able to identify different phonemes and how they combine together to form complete words. Once they have accomplished this they should be able to add or delete phonemes to words to create different words. They will learn that adding an additional sound or deleting one completely changes the word.

This is very important for your child’s reading development. It is also a lot of fun for your child as they will realize that they can change words completely by the addition or deletion of phonemes.

When you first start to teach your child how to add or delete phonemes to create new words you will need to be patient as the child may find this difficult to grasp at first. They will need some phoneme segmentation and blending skills to be able to do this successfully.

You can start by adding or deleting one phoneme from a word and then progress later to adding or removing a number of sounds or phonemes. As your child becomes proficient at this activity they will naturally want to progress to tougher assignments.

In the video below you will see Jim Yang using phoneme addition and deletion worksheets with his son Ethan:

What Is Phoneme Addition And Deletion?

There is nothing difficult about this concept. By using phone addition and deletion your child will learn that by adding or removing a phoneme or sound (or even a number of phonemes) will change the existing word into a different word. So they will understand that all words are a combination of individual sounds and that if any of the sounds are taken away or new sounds are added then the words will change.

So as an example if we start with the word “top” and add the /s/ sound at the beginning then the word changes to “stop”. If the word “cart” is used and we then delete the sound /t/ at the end of the word it changes to “car’.

The use of phoneme addition and deletion helps to develop your child’s phonemic awareness and this is part of phonological awareness. You will assist your child in the manipulation of spoken words by adding or deleting specific phonemes.

If you child finds this difficult at first you can start by having them add or delete syllables in compound words. The task is best done orally and should be taught using explicit and direct instructions. The concept can be reinforced using games and activities.

Teaching Phoneme Addition And Deletion

Start with a list of words that you want your child to add to or delete from. Tell your child that you will speak some words out loud and then ask them to speak the words with specific sounds added or deleted.

So you could ask them to say out loud the word that is the result of adding /p/ to the word “in”. Or a deletion example could be removing the /b/ sound from the word “bat” to make the word “at”.

Repeat these exercises often until your child can successfully add or delete phonemes from words to create new words. You can use picture cards here to encourage your child to add or delete from the beginning or end of certain words.

If your child has difficulty with the concept try adding or deleting whole words. For example you can ask your child what word is the result of adding “cup to “cake” and see if they say “cupcake”. Or you can ask them what word is left when you delete “base” from “baseball” and see if they can work out that “ball” remains.

Making Phoneme Addition And Deletion Fun

When teaching children anything it is always a good idea to make it fun. One idea is to use a puppet which takes away letters or adds them to the start and end of words. You can use a sock for this as all you will be doing is taking away or adding phonemes.

You will need a number of letter pictures for this. Your child can give the puppet letters to add to the word and ask them to take away letters to make other words. If the child provides a letter and a word cannot be made then tell them that this was a “nonsense word” and that they will need to try again.

Worksheets For Phonemic Addition Activities

As with all of our worksheets there are full instructions provided and they can be printed off so that you can work with your child using them. Here the worksheets will help your child understand how adding different phonemes to words will change them into different words.

The worksheets have pictures of objects and an additional phoneme to be added. So for example if there is a picture of a car and the phoneme /t/ is shown then your child needs to add this to form the new word “cart”. The pictures make the exercise more fun for your child.

Worksheets For Phonemic Deletion Activities

These printable worksheets are supplied with full instructions to tach your child the concept of phoneme deletion.

The worksheets will contain words and a phoneme that needs to be deleted to form new words. For example you might see the words “then”, “that” and “this” and your child will be asked to delete the /t/ phoneme from the beginning of the words to create the new words “hen”, “hat” and “his”.

These great worksheets are available with the Children Learning Reading progrogram. Use this link to get them for your child and teach them phonemic awareness and phone addition and deletion.

For the most simple and effective reading program that will help your child learn how to read in only 12 weeks click here.