Phonemic awareness is the best predictor of a child’s reading skills during the first two years of school. You may have heard a teacher, an SLP, or a school psychologist use the term “phonemic awareness” when discussing literacy or diagnosing a child with dyslexia. But what is phonemic awareness, and why is it such a big deal in a student’s literacy education? Who needs to learn phonemic awareness, and what does learning it look like? Background Information In 1997, the United States government established a committee called The National Reading Panel, a group whose aim was to assess the effectiveness…