Phonemic Awareness Videos That Keep Your Students Begging for More! (2024)

Phonemic awareness videos can make an abstract concept, like phoneme manipulation, easier to grasp and understand! Since these skills are crucial in learning to read, use these videos as time-fillers in your classroom and make the most of your instructional minutes!

Phonemic awareness is the foundation of learning to read using phonics. Which makes it super important.

However, these skills that are easy to skip over if you’re not purposefully adding them into your routine. Especially since it hasn’t been made a priority in many box curriculums. (So unfortunate. 😣)

So…who has a ton of extra free time in their classroom? 🙋🏽‍♀️

Oh, wait.

You don’t have enough time to teach all the standards and content?

Yeah, me either. 😔

Fortunately, research shows that phonemic awareness instruction does not need to consume large periods of time. 👏

Standing in line, a few extra minutes when you finish a lesson early, the weird 5 minutes between specials and lunchtime…these are the perfect times to practice and build phonemic awareness skills!

Those are also great times to have a little brain break. 🥳 That is why I LOVE to use videos! Many of these videos will have students singing, dancing and/or moving along (while building foundational reading skills). #winwin 🙌

“Phonemic Awareness Should be Done in the Dark”

But Lauren! I thought that you said that phonemic awareness is a listening activity and it should be done in the dark?!?! And now you want us to show phonemic awareness videos? 🤨

Why yes, I did say that phonemic awareness should be “done in the dark”! And it’s true!

However, here are two things to consider:

1. Who said you can’t listen to the videos with the lights off? In other words, keep your speakers on and turn the display off! BAM! “listening” videos in the dark. ?
2. This doesn’t mean that you can never practice blending, segmenting, deleting phonemes without letters as a visual. It just means that the focus is not on sound-symbol relationships. (That would be phonics.) Even if your students haven’t learned all of the letters of the alphabet (yet), you can still use these videos! The focus and purpose of these videos is to HEAR the phonemic awareness activities. The focus is not on the spelling of the words.

Phonological Awareness VS Phonemic Awareness

Before we get started, do you know the difference between phonological awareness and phonemic awareness?

I used these terms interchangeably for years, but they’re actually quite different.

I’ve explained it all (and even created a little cheat sheet for you) which you can read about here: The Difference Between Phonological Awareness and Phonemic Awareness.

Videos for Teaching Phonological Awareness

Since phonological awareness and phonemic awareness activities build on each other, I like to practice a few phonological awareness skills first.

Even if some of your kiddos have mastered hearing and manipulating words, syllables, and onset and rime, it never hurts to use these phonological awareness videos as a warm-up. Remember, they all serve as a brain break, too!

Learning Videos for the Classroom

While I personally believe these videos are appropriate for first and second grade classrooms, remember that there can often be inappropriate ads before and after YouTube videos. Also, I always recommend previewing the full video before showing it to your class.

If you plan to show YouTube videos in your classroom, I highly recommend that you read this blog post by Catherine, the Brown Bag Teacher. She shares three ways to eliminate YouTube video ads so that you can safely play these learning videos in your classroom.

Sound Discrimination

Beginning Sounds Song Word Play

This video is a great opportunity to get moving and practice isolating the beginning sounds of words. I start the video around 40 seconds and give instructions to move and say the beginning sounds.

Rhyming

I Love to Rhyme

I love this video because it is scaffolded for different levels of understanding. Students who may not quite “get” rhymes yet can listen to the two rhyming words he says. Kids who are ready to produce rhymes can shout out a third rhyme to the beat.

Syllables and Syllable Splitting

Clap it Out

Could there be a better syllable song? I think not. 😉 Kids absolutely love dancing, clapping and singing to this song. They make silly sentences out of one syllable words. Then they go on to do two, three, four and five syllable word sentences, too! #winning

Blending (Onset and Rime)

Let’s Make Words

This song is a little (okay a LOT) silly. However, it works on the very important phonemic awareness skill of blending. Around 30 seconds he gives the example of “duck.” He says the beginning sound and asks the kids to say the end. Then they blend them together!

Phonemic Awareness Videos

Blending and Segmenting Phonemes

Stretchy the Word Snake

This video gives such an excellent visual of stretching a word out. He sounds out each sound and then blends them back together (another skill! Double duty ?)

Phoneme Deletion

Miguel the Magic Monkey

The chorus of this video is an explanation of phoneme deletion. Jack Hartman says to listen to the word to hear the sound disappear. I like to start this video at 50 seconds (the intro is l-o-n-g). It gives students the chance to hear examples of real words before and after a sound is deleted.

Fair warning: your kids will probably sing this song all day. I don’t know why they latch on to this one, but my kids just can’t get it out of their heads…which means I can’t get it out of my head. 🤪

Phoneme Manipulation

Apples and Bananas

This song is perfect for practicing changing sounds in the same word! I love how after each verse the video says “Let’s change it to an ___.” Kids can hear the sound that it will be changing to, which helps them make that phonemic awareness connection!

Let’s Make a Change

My kids love to move to to this video! I like how it doesn’t show any letters. Students have to listen to the song and look at the photos. We do this one when we all need to get up and move!

Phonemic Awareness Teacher Task Cards

These phonemic awareness videos are just one way I integrate these important skills into my school day.

Sometimes, you might have a few extra minutes of downtime, but you don’t have time to pull up a video or set up the display. ⏰ That time doesn’t have to be lost!

That’s when I love using these phonemic awareness teacher task cards! They have hundreds of skill building activities, and it’s all scripted for you! All you have to do is read them aloud!

I keep them on a ring next to the back door. After we get all lined up, we practice a few skills. I love that the skills build on each other. I just use a sticky note so that we never lose our place.

You can these phonemic awareness teacher task cards while distance learning, too! Just read the cards aloud to your students – they don’t need a copy or a visual!

How do you fit phonemic awareness practice into your day? Do you have any awesome phonemic awareness videos that I don’t know about? I would love to hear your ideas. Let me know below! 👇

More Phonemic Awareness: Blending & Segmenting Resources