Deleting and manipulating sounds Deleting and manipulating individual sounds is the most complex phonological awareness skill. It is an important task when students are brainstorming rhyming or alliterative words, or correcting their spelling. It involves identifying the sounds in words, and deleting or swapping sounds to make new words. An example of deletion is: "What is 'swing' without the /s/?" The answer would be "wing" An example of manipulation is: "What happens when you take off the /d/ in 'dog' and swap it with /ck/?" The answer would be "dock". Here are some demonstrations of phoneme deletion, and how teachers might scaffold children to develop this skill: For example, the counters can be used to represent the phonemes in the following words: