The Top Predictors of Future Reading Success
What are the top two predictors of future reading success? Well…the answers might surprise you! You might think it’s parents reading to their children, or the ability to memorize sight words.
The research is clear! Long before children can read books independently, two skills strongly predict future reading success.
✅Phonemic Awareness
✅ Letter Name Knowledge
These are not my personal ideas or opinions. These predictors are backed by decades of research and large-scale studies. In this blog, I’m going to break down what these skills are, why they matter, and how you can teach them effectively to ensure your readers are successful!
Phonemic Awareness: Hearing the Sounds in Words
Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, identify, isolate, and manipulate the individual speech sounds (phonemes) in spoken words.
Important Skills Include:
- Isolation: What is the first sound you hear in mop? /m/
- Blending: /s/ /u/ /n/ = sun
- Segmenting: map = /m/ /a/ /p/
- Manipulating: Change the /m/ in mat to /s/ = sat
Why Phonemic Awareness Matters
To read words, children must begin by understanding the relationships between sounds and letters (also known as the Alphabetic Principle). If they cannot clearly hear the sounds in spoken words, decoding to read and encoding to spell become extremely challenging. If you want to learn more about how the brain stores words, read my blog post about Orthographic Mapping.
Research consistently shows that phonemic awareness is one of the strongest predictors of later reading achievement (National Reading Panel, 2000; NELP, 2008).
Letter Name Knowledge: More Important Than You think
There is a lot of misinformation online suggesting we should skip teaching letter names, but there is plenty of research that says otherwise.
Letter-name knowledge is another powerful predictor of reading success! (NELP, 2008)
Why letter names help
First, letter names serve as a common vocabulary we all use when learning how to read and spell. I like to use the analogy of teaching young children about animals. We usually say, “This is a cow. The cow says moo.” We give the object a label. Young children are extremely literal, so it’s best to be clear and concise. This is the letter Mm. The sound we say when we see it is /m/.
Second, many letter names actually contain the sound they represent:
- B begins with /b/
- F end with /f/
- T begins with /t/
- M ends with /m/
These built-in sounds help children connect spoken sounds to printed letters. When letter names are taught explicitly as part of an alphabet routine, they support phonics!
Third, difficulty learning letter names can also be an early red flag that a child may need additional reading support.
How to Teach Phonemic Awareness & Alphabet Knowledge Skills
Here’s what I include as part of a structured literacy block:
✅ Daily phonemic awareness practice tied to the phonics skill of the lesson
✅ Teaching letter names & sounds together following an explicit routine
✅ Modeling (I Do ➡ We Do ➡You Do)
✅ Practice, Repetition, & Review
My Favorite Classroom-Ready Resources
Here are resources I’ve created to help teach these essential skills:
Alphabet Kit: Includes a Teaching Routine, Practice Pages, Assessments, & MORE!
Alphabet Mini Books: Includes books for all 26 letters (Letter Names, Letter Sounds, Phonemic Awareness, Letter Formation)
Alphabet Playdough Mats: Includes practice for all 26 letters and numbers 0-20
High-Quality Free Resources I love
Reading Rockets– Search for the literacy topic you want more information about.
Reading Universe– Select the teaching topic you want to learn about. Includes resources for practice.
Florida Center for Reading Research– Select the grade level and literacy topic to get activities.
Phonics & Stuff– Select games for digital activities for students. Select tools for teacher resources.
Final Thoughts
When we prioritize phonemic awareness and letter name knowledge early on, we are giving children the strongest possible foundation for reading success. This doesn’t mean these are the only two areas to support early literacy! Language comprehension is also needed to ensure that we create skilled readers. I can discuss the components of language comprehension in a future post. Stay tuned!