Phonemic Awareness is the understanding that spoken words are made up of individual sounds called phonemes. This understanding or awareness is critical for skilled literacy outcomes. A learner who is phonemically aware understands that there is an internal structure to our spoken words and that words are made up of sounds. The goal is for students to become phonemically proficient where they are able to automatically and simultaneously isolate, blend, segment and manipulate the individual sounds in words.

Bridge the Gap 2025 was written as an intervention resource to support students with poor phonemic awareness. The lessons in this manual are aimed at strengthening specific phonemic skills in a systematic progression of development, based on the results of a placement assessment. These lessons can be part of an intervention lesson that also incorporates systematic phonics instruction and opportunities for application of skills through encoding and controlled text reading. These lessons are designed to be part of a Tier 2 or Tier 3 intervention for students in 2nd grade and above who struggle to decode and encode. Lessons can be taught one-to-one or with a small group of learners (5 learners or less). The Bridge the Gap lessons provide opportunities for explicit instruction in early, basic, and advanced phonemic awareness skills while simultaneously providing opportunities to reinforce letter-sound correspondences with corresponding word, phrase and sentence lists.

Bridge the Gap 2025 is available in print or digital format.