Correct Response: C. Option C is correct because this intervention is appropriate for addressing a difficulty with phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is the ability to perceive individual speech sounds (phonemes) in words. At the first-grade level, spelling errors that fall under the phonemic awareness category most likely result from a student's incomplete perception of all the phonemes in a spoken word or the sequence of those phonemes. Instruction focused on sequentially segmenting all the phonemes in spoken words would enhance the students' accurate phoneme-grapheme mapping, or spelling. Options A, B, and D are incorrect because the phonological awareness skills targeted would not address the likely cause of the students' difficulty, which is perceiving the constituent sounds in a word in the correct sequence. Option A targets phonological units larger than the phoneme. The phoneme-substitution activity in Option B does not promote awareness of all the phonemes in a word or their sequence. Phoneme blending (D) is essential for supporting beginning decoding instruction but would not directly address the students' difficulty perceiving and sequencing all the phonemes in spoken words.
