Phonemic awareness is one of the main things that children in my grade level are taught. The assessments we give check for the understanding of the many aspects of phonemic awareness. We assess for understanding in the areas of letter recognition, vocabulary, rhyming, alliteration, words in a sentence, syllabication and onset rhyme. I do like this type of assessment for our four to five year old children but they also require us to test our three year old students and this is a challenging task. It is funny in a way because when we first test the three year olds they are very excited to get tested. When we start and they have no idea what I'm asking them they nod yes with a great big smile to every question I ask them. Most of these students soon begin to understand later in the year but there are some that make take more than one school year to be sucessfull.