Phonemic awareness- the ability to hear and manipulate the sounds in spoken words and the understanding that spoken words are made up of sequences of speech sounds (Yopp, 1992) The best predictor of reading difficulty in kindergarten or first grade is the inability to segment words and syllabes into constituent sound units (Lyon, 1995) The research is very clear on the important role phonemic awareness plays in the reading process.  Children must understand that language is comprised of spoken words and that those words can be broken down into separate sounds.  The child’s level of phonemic awareness upon entering school is one of the strongest indicators of how well he/she will learn to read.  The exciting part is that, as teachers, by assessing our students’ phonemic