When students master initial sounds, what is the next sound position to focus on?

When students have mastered initial sounds, the logical next step in their phonemic awareness development is to focus on medial sounds. This is because phonemic awareness is a sequential skill-building process, and after students can identify the initial sounds in words, moving to medial sounds helps them recognize and manipulate sounds located between the initial and final positions.

Medial sounds are crucial for developing a deeper understanding of how words are constructed and can enhance skills like blending sounds to form words and decoding unfamiliar words while reading. Focusing on medial sounds helps students differentiate between similar sounding words and improves their overall phonological processing, which is essential for reading fluency and comprehension.

This progression ensures that students are building a comprehensive understanding of phonemes in various positions, which is a critical component of literacy development.