Early literacy skills constitute a fundamental foundation for children's reading and writing development. However, literacy instruction in preschools and early elementary classrooms continues to emphasize letter recognition, while the systematic development of phonological awareness receives limited attention. This study aimed to analyze instructional needs and to design a conceptual prototype of an early literacy intervention model based on a phonological awareness approach. A Research and Development approach using the ADDIE model was adopted; this article reports the Analysis and Design phases only, while the Development, Implementation, and Evaluation phases are planned for subsequent research. The needs analysis combined classroom observations, play-based assessments of children's phonological awareness, semi-structured teacher interviews, and document analysis, involving one kindergarten, one elementary school, 60 children, and 12 teachers in Tasikmalaya City, Indonesia. Most children had difficulty identifying initial sounds, segmenting words of three or more syllables, recognizing rhymes, and manipulating simple phonemes, with the greatest difficulty on voicing contrasts. Teachers equated reading readiness with alphabet recognition and had no instructional resources for phonological awareness. The resulting conceptual prototype rests on five design principles—progressive phonological development, play-based learning, contextualized instruction, practical applicability, and embedded assessment—and specifies learning objectives, instructional syntax, an activity hierarchy, media, and assessment strategies. Because expert validation, practicality testing, and effectiveness testing have not been conducted, the model is presented as a design hypothesis, not as a validated intervention.
Copyrights © 2026