Which of the following demonstrates a clear example of phonemic awareness?

Phonemic awareness involves the ability to recognize and manipulate the individual sounds, or phonemes, in spoken words. The correct choice illustrates this concept effectively by breaking down a simple word, "cat," into its individual sounds (/k/, /æ/, /t/). This skill is foundational for learning to read, as it provides the necessary building blocks for understanding how sounds combine to form words.

In contrast, identifying rhymes in poetry primarily engages with larger units of sounds rather than the individual phonemes, focusing instead on end sounds in words. Recognizing sight words involves memory retrieval of whole words rather than phonemic manipulation. Differentiating between letters in the alphabet relates more to letter recognition than to awareness of the sounds those letters produce when combined in speech. Thus, the action in the correct answer clearly exemplifies phonemic awareness as it directly involves the manipulation of individual sounds within a word.