Phonemic awareness for older students who struggle to read

A 7th grader who reads slowly does not automatically need phonemic awareness instruction. Many older struggling readers can segment and blend sounds fine; their problem is decoding long words, reading fluently, or understanding what they read. Starting the year with rhyme sorts wastes their time and tells them they are being taught like a 5-year-old.

Some older students do have a real gap. They spell "strap" as "sap," cannot read a nonsense word like "plint," and stall on every word with a blend. For them, sound work still matters. The question is how to do it well. The pillar on phonemic awareness interventions covers the skill sequence; this page is about students in grades 4 to 12.

Who needs it: check from the top down

Work down from the reading problem to the sound skill, and stop where the student succeeds.

1. Comprehension and fluency. If oral reading is accurate but slow, the need is fluency. See reading fluency interventions.
2. Decoding. Give a list of 20 nonsense words and 20 multisyllabic real words. Below about 85% correct on either list points to a decoding need.
3. Phonemic awareness. Only for students with a decoding need, give 10 items each of segmenting 4- and 5-sound words, deleting a sound inside a blend, and spelling nonsense words. If those are solid, teach decoding and skip oral sound work.

The National Center on Intensive Intervention describes this kind of diagnostic data as the way to find the specific skill to target when a student is not responding.^[1]

What the evidence says, honestly

The National Reading Panel found phonemic awareness instruction helped reading, with larger effects for younger children and smaller effects on reading for students past 1st grade. It also found stronger effects when instruction used letters.^[2] The What Works Clearinghouse guide for grades 4 to 9 recommends teaching students to decode multisyllabic words, with sound work done through the letters and word parts they are reading.^[3]

There is a current debate about "advanced" oral phonemic awareness: long daily drills of deleting and swapping sounds with no letters, for students who already read. Supporters argue it speeds up word learning. Critics point out that oral-only drills for older readers have not clearly shown reading gains beyond what letter-based instruction gives. Until that settles, a reasonable plan for older students is short, letter-based sound work, with reading and spelling as the measure of success.

How to teach it to older students

Use letters and long words from the start

Older students know most letters. Put sounds into tiles, whiteboards or a word-building app. Start with 1-syllable nonsense words (plint, strom, glaft), then real multisyllabic words split into syllables: fan / tas / tic, con / tent, in / vent / ed.

Segment syllables, then sounds, then spell

For a long word like "instrument": clap the syllables (in / stru / ment), segment each syllable into sounds (/i/ /n/; /s/ /t/ /r/ /u/; /m/ /e/ /n/ /t/), then spell each syllable. This mirrors how the student needs to read and spell content words.

Swap and delete inside written words

"Write strap. Change one letter to make strip. Now take out the r." (stip) This keeps manipulation tied to print. Five to eight items is enough.

Keep it short and age-respectful

Sound work should take 5 minutes of a 45-minute intervention period, not the whole period. Use content vocabulary, sports terms or made-up words, never baby pictures. Tell the student why: "Your spelling drops sounds in the middle of blends. This fixes that."

Worked example: Isaiah, 7th grade

Isaiah is a fictional 7th grader with a specific learning disability in reading. He reads 9 of 20 nonsense words and 8 of 20 multisyllabic words correctly. On sound probes, he segments 5-sound words in 3 of 10 and deletes a sound inside a blend in 1 of 10. In writing, he drops the second consonant of blends in about half of the blend words he uses.

His interventionist spends 5 minutes of each daily 45-minute class on sound work with tiles and a whiteboard, then moves into syllable decoding. She probes every two weeks.

By week 10 the team drops the separate sound goal and keeps a decoding goal. Isaiah's sound skills are now practiced inside every syllable lesson.

Phonemic awareness IEP goals for middle school

Middle school goals should name letters or long words, so they measure a skill that matters for reading. The numbers below are illustrations.

1. Given 10 spoken nonsense words of 4 and 5 sounds, the student will spell each with one letter or letter pair per sound for 9 of 10 words on 2 consecutive probes. Baseline: 4 of 10. Template.
2. Given 10 spoken 3- and 4-syllable content words, the student will say the syllables, then the sounds in each syllable, then spell the word, for 8 of 10 words across 3 probes. Baseline: 3 of 10. Template.
3. Given 10 written multisyllabic words, the student will change one sound when told the new word and read the result for 8 of 10 words on 2 consecutive probes. Baseline: 2 of 10. Template.
4. Given 10 spoken words with vowel teams or r-controlled vowels, the student will map each sound to its letters for 9 of 10 words across 3 probes. Baseline: 5 of 10. Template.

More options are on the middle school phonological awareness goals page and the middle school IEP goals hub. For writing the rest of the goal set, see IEP goals for middle school.

Common mistakes

• Weak: Rhyme and syllable picture sorts for a 6th grader. Better: Nonsense words and content words with letters.
• Weak: Assuming every slow reader has a phonemic awareness gap. Better: Test decoding first, then sound skills only if decoding is weak.
• Weak: A 20-minute daily oral drill with no letters. Better: Five minutes of letter-based work inside decoding lessons.
• Weak: A goal of "will improve phonemic awareness skills." Better: Name the word type, the response and the denominator, as in goal 1.
• Weak: Tracking only the sound probe. Better: Track nonsense word and multisyllabic word reading alongside it.

Tools and templates

• The phonological awareness goals page includes older-student templates such as map sounds in long words with digital tiles.
• Record probes on the opportunity trial data sheet.
• For students with dyslexia, see IEP goals for dyslexia.
• Check a draft goal in the goal checker.

Frequently asked questions

Use it in IEP Atlas

• Middle school phonological awareness goals
• Middle school IEP goals
• Phonological awareness goals (reading)
• Phonemic awareness in the IEP glossary
• IEP goal checker

Related guides

• Phonemic awareness interventions for students with IEPs
• Phonemic awareness IEP goal examples
• Phoneme deletion activities, with letters and without
• Phonological awareness assessment template, with a completed example
• Phonological awareness vs phonemic awareness vs phonics
• Manipulatives for phonemic awareness: what to use for each skill

Sources

1. Diagnostic Data, National Center on Intensive Intervention
2. Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching Children to Read, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)
3. Providing Reading Interventions for Students in Grades 4–9, What Works Clearinghouse, Institute of Education Sciences

Written and checked by the IEP Atlas editorial team under our editorial policy. This guide describes general practice and federal rules. It is not legal advice; your state may add requirements, and the IEP team makes the decisions for each student.