Letter Sound Activities Tips
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Letter Sound Activities
- Although we give a specific rate of introduction of new letter sounds, you should avoid introducing new letters if students are having difficulty with more than one previously taught letter sound unless the new letter sound is visually and aurally dissimilar to the letter being introduced. For example, if students have not mastered /f/ and /o/, do not introduce /u/, since it is similar to /o/; instead, re-run an accuracy-building activity that includes /o/.
- When you give the sound for a letter, avoid adding /uh/. If you teach /ruh/ instead of /rrr/, you will have students sounding out /run/ as /ruh-un/ later, and the leap from /ruh-un/ to /run/ is tougher than the hop from /rrr-un/ to /run/. To help you get the correct sound, practice this in front of a mirror:
- For continuous sound letters, take a word beginning with the target letter and prolong the sound: /rrr-un/, /vvv-an/.
- For stop sound letters, take a word ending with the target letter and isolate the last sound: /mo-b/, /ma-d/.
- Pay close attention to whether the description of how to make a sound says your voice box should be 'on' (e.g., /b/) or not (e.g., /p/).
- When you point to a letter, wait before touching it and train students to respond only when you touch the letter. That gives all students time to think of the answer, so that slower students don't just copy faster students.
- Test your students on the following letters and provide extra practice if necessary (e.g., Letter sound fluency) since they are the letter sounds at-risk students most often confuse: d b e u i v y. Less commonly, students may also struggle with: a o p f c g j.
- It is quite common for students to confuse letters b and d. One mnemonic you can introduce your students to is to write b d in large letters and turn them into a bed (show them that writing d b won't work because the "mattress" falls down). If students can remember that this is a bed not a deb, they can figure out which letter is which.
- For each activity, keep a record of items a student had problems with. Review this activity log before the next activity so you pay special attention to those students.
- Note that we only teach capital letters where they are different from the lower-case letters. So we teach M but not x. Students can easily generalize x to X.