Letter Sound Actions/Reminders
A cheat sheet for how I do it
Hello readers! You all have the best ideas. A couple of you, just this week, asked if I might want to make a cheat sheet with all the actions and reminders I use to help my students remember letter sounds. We’re talking the actions/reminders I say hundreds of times as we practice letter names and sounds during whole group phonics (using my alphabet cards and advanced phonics cards), use the sounds to blend during small group instruction, and apply them during our daily writing time. If you always use the same action, you’ll see students doing the actions throughout the school day to help them remember letter sounds.
Such a great idea from my subscribers and the answer is yes, yes I do want to make that for you!
This is a good opportunity to share the order in which I teach letters/sounds and then the more advanced phonics. Remember, there is no “right” order to teach the letter names and sounds. You’ll often hear that you should teach high utility consonants and vowels first, such as CATNIP or SATPIN, so that you can start students on blending right away. The first few sounds I teach are sounds that are familiar to young children and easy to position the mouth for; while they’re maybe not the most useful letters, they definitely work well to teach blending. I try to separate letter names or sounds that are similar. Is it perfect and set in stone? It’s based on years of teaching phonics and it works, but no, it’s in a constant state of change and improvement. You should teach the letters in an order that makes sense and works for you and your students. If you want to use my small group materials–without having to edit them–that align with my whole group phonics instruction, then you might want to follow along in the same order.
Do the actions while making each letter sound. You can change it up a bit by going fast some days, slow some days, gathering all together some days, sitting at desks/tables some days, whispering all of them some days, etc. I always explain to my students that there are two reasons we practice the letters and sounds every day:
because they need to know these to learn how to read and write
because scientists have figured out that students need to practice their letters and sounds hundreds of times to learn them.
They love the latter, especially after our first science lesson when they learn that scientists study the world around them and that students can be scientists too!
Do not model letter sounds with a vowel attached at the end, such as bu, ru, su, etc. Don’t let students slip into the habit of doing it either. It will really mess with their ability to segment sounds in words. We don’t want the word but to be bu-t; it needs to be b-u-t. Sounds should be either really short and crisp or held out when they can be (sssssun).
This video will show my whole group phonics instruction in action as well as the “grandma story” I use to teach the short e sound.
Coming up is the current order in which I teach the sounds. Following that, you’ll see them in alphabetical order. One reference may be easier than the other for you and your circumstances.
In alphabetical order:
To get this document and save it or print it—or to get my alphabet and/or advanced phonics cards, please email me. And just a reminder that I am not saying this is the best way to do it or the one-and-only way to do it. We all have different circumstances and different teaching styles and, thankfully, different ideas. You can just ignore this altogether or use bits and pieces that work for you. Let me know if you have questions or ideas. I love your ideas and I’m grateful to those of you who felt comfortable asking for this.
Randee
THANKS!! You ROCK!! Just what we needed!!
Good to hear!