A large research base indicates that teaching phonemic awareness is one of the most powerful ways to prevent reading failure. While phonics instruction is critical, it must go hand-in-hand with phonemic awareness instruction to allow students to learn to read and write, regardless of the language of instruction. Phonemic awareness is a critical aspect of structured literacy instruction yet these skills are rarely taught. This session will focus on the role of phonemic awareness in research-based models of reading development, as well as practical classroom applications, including assessing and teaching phonemic awareness to emergent and developing readers in the FSL classroom.