Phonological Awareness is the understanding of how language can be divided into its components. For example, we speak in sentences. Sentences can be broken down into words. Words are broken down into syllables. Onset rime is the breaking apart of a syllable. The onset of a word is all the sounds that come before a vowel and the rime is the vowel and all the sounds after. Rime is specific to the word spelling pattern and sound. Phonological Awareness also includes the ability to recognize and generate rhyming words (that sound the same and may or may not have the same spelling pattern).
phonemic awareness
Phonemic Awareness is a sub skill of the broad category of phonological awareness. Phonemes are the smallest parts of sound in a spoken word. The English language has 44 unique sounds. The 44 English sounds fall into two categories: consonants and vowels. Various letters and letter combinations known as graphemes are used to represent the sounds.
Two factors have been found to predict early reading success: Phonemic Awareness and Knowledge of letters. Both Letterland Intervention (Grades K-2) and Recipe for Reading Intervention (Grades 3-5) provide systematic and explicit instruction in letter knowledge and phonemic awareness utilizing the Orton-Gillingham reading technique.