Which skill is a higher level of phonological awareness, focusing on individual sounds in words?

Phonemic awareness is indeed the skill that specifically focuses on individual sounds, or phonemes, in words. It involves the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate these individual sounds. This skill is crucial for developing reading abilities because understanding how sounds function in language lays the foundation for decoding words. Phonemic awareness goes beyond other aspects of phonological awareness, which might involve larger units of sound, such as syllables or onsets and rimes.

An example of phonemic awareness would be recognizing that the word "cat" is made up of the sounds /k/, /æ/, and /t/. A learner with strong phonemic awareness can isolate these sounds, blend them together, or segment them, which is vital for accurate reading and spelling.

In contrast, the other skills mentioned, such as fluency and comprehension, pertain to later stages of reading development, where decoding has already been mastered. Fluency refers to the ability to read a text accurately and quickly, while comprehension involves understanding and interpreting what is read. Phoneme isolation, although an important part of phonemic awareness, is just one specific aspect rather than the broader skill itself.