What skill involves deleting a syllable in PreK phonological awareness?

The skill that involves deleting a syllable in PreK phonological awareness is sound manipulation. This skill requires children to actively engage with the sounds and syllables of words, allowing them to manipulate these sounds in various ways. Deleting a syllable from a word is a prime example of sound manipulation, as it involves altering the structure of the word by removing a component, rather than simply recognizing or identifying it.

In the context of early literacy development, sound manipulation is critical because it fosters a deeper understanding of how words are constructed and how sounds function within them. By practicing sound manipulation tasks, children develop the ability to break words down into their individual sounds and syllables, facilitating their overall phonemic awareness—a foundational skill necessary for reading and writing.

The other options relate to different skills within phonological awareness: identifying syllables focuses on recognizing and counting syllables in words, identifying rhyme involves recognizing words that share similar ending sounds, and producing sound pertains to the ability to articulate or produce sounds correctly. While these are all important components of phonological awareness, they do not involve the specific action of deleting a syllable, which is distinctly characterized as sound manipulation.