Phonemic & Phonological Awareness - Updated 2025

He aha te kai a te rangatira? He kōrero, he kōrero, he kōrero What is the food of the leader? It is knowledge. It is communication.

SPELD NZ offers this evidence-based kōwae to contribute to the growing awareness of the need for beginning readers to develop phonemic and phonological awareness.
Delve deeply into how sounds are learned in the English language and understand their critical place in developing skills for reading and writing. Learn strategies and tools to strengthen your teaching kete.

"Very useful, especially for teachers who have taught with the whole language approach."

"Really informative and makes me want to do more."

Learning Outcomes

Understand what phonological awareness and phonemic awareness are:

Phonological – rhyme, alliteration, segmenting sentences, syllables, blending and segmenting onset-rime
Phonemic – individual sounds – initial sound, medial sound, final sound, segmenting sounds in words, blending sounds in words, deleting/substituting sounds in words

Become aware of the place of phonemic awareness for reading and writing skill development
Learn strategies for strengthening phonological and phonemic awareness
Develop some tools for your kete of teaching phonological and phonemic awareness.

Ideal for

Teacher aides, teachers, Learning Support Coordinators, SENCO, RTLB, RT-LIT and all others seeking greater knowledge on phonemic and phonological awareness.

Delivery method

Approximately six hours of reading, videos and self-checking quizzes make up the content of the learning in this kōwae. Diverse presentation methods will demonstrate and invite reflection on how phonological awareness is learned, both typically and non-typically. In this way the kōwae is aligned with the Ministry’s Learning Support Action Plan 2019 to 2025, in which one of the priorities is “Flexible supports for neuro-diverse children and young people” (Ministry of Education, 2019, p.32).

Want to know more?

See this Phonemic and Phonological Awareness Kōwae Ako handbook »

Inquiries

Email: training@speld.org.nz
Phone: 028 2550 7415 or 0800 773 536 Ext 7

Cost

$180 incl GST
NB: SPELD NZ is passionate about phonemic and phonological awareness, and may be able to provide a subsidy to reduce the cost of this kōwae to educators nationwide. These subsidies are subject to availability – please check with us for details.

Enrolment

SPELD NZ professionals can enrol using their usual Moodle login and clicking on the Webinars/Kōwae Ako tile.

For all others, please go via the enrolment portal below. It will ask you to create your own login, if you do not already have one. You can then choose your Learning Capsule/Kōwae Ako. You will be given 21-day access to this Phonemic & Phonological Awareness Learning Capsule/Kōwae Ako as soon as you have made payment via credit or debit card.

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