Which phonemic awareness skill is demonstrated when a teacher guides a student to place a token for each sound in a word?

• A. PhonemeSegmentation
• B. PhonemeDeletion
• C. PhonemeCategorization
• D. PhonemeSubstitution

Answer: (A)

Phoneme segmentation is the skill of breaking a spoken word into its individual sounds and identifying each sound. When a teacher guides a student to place a token for every sound in a word, the student is actively isolating and counting those sounds, showing awareness of the word’s sound structure. For example, the word "cat" would involve placing three tokens, one for each sound: /c/ /a/ /t/. This practice builds the understanding that words are made up of discrete phonemes, which is essential for later blending and decoding. It’s different from removing a sound (deletion), changing a sound (substitution), or sorting by a shared sound (categorization).