🔤 What is a Phoneme?

A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a word that can change its meaning.

✏️ What is a Grapheme?

A grapheme is a letter or group of letters that we write to represent a sound.

🔤 What is a Morpheme?

A morpheme is a word part (like a root, prefix, or suffix) that has meaning.

1. Phonetics: The science of speech sounds – how we make them with our mouth, lips, tongue.

How we say sounds.

Example:
Say /b/ – lips touch and pop open.

2. Phonics: Connecting letters to their sounds.

Learning that ‘b’ says /b/.

Example:
“b” in bat says /b/.

3. Phonological Awareness: Playing with sounds in words – rhyming, clapping syllables, breaking words.

Hearing and playing with word sounds (not letters!).

Example:
Clap the syllables: el-e-phant (3 claps)

4. Phonemic Awareness: The ability to hear and change individual sounds in words.

Hearing and changing sounds one by one.

Example:
Change the first sound in cat to /h/ → now it’s hat!