Practice and Learn: Matching Letter Sounds

Roleplay the Strategy!

Ask a partner to practice teaching the Sounds to Spelling teaching strategy with you! You will take the role of teacher, and your partner will take the role of student. Then you’ll switch roles with a new set of words. If you don’t have a partner, play around with both roles; and be sure to practice the strategies out loud, just as you would in real life with a student. 

Partners, remember to make a few errors during the roleplay so that you can practice giving corrective feedback. We'll cover how to give corrective feedback in more detail in lesson 3.4 of the course. Practice recording errors with this sample form (opens in new window) (opens in new window). 

This is a strategy we use to teach students to match sounds to letters in order to spell a word!  

1. Select a list of words for your student (partner) to spell. You may use: 

bricks

farming

paint

2. Prepare materials for your student to use: 

• A copy of the Sounds to Spelling paper grid (opens in new window) (opens in new window)
• A set of small markers or tokens 

3. Work with your partner to practice the steps for Sounds to Spelling. 

Take for example the word lob. 

Say, 

The word is lob: /l/, /ŏ/, /b/.

Student says,

lob

While pushing a small token into the first square of the grid, the student says,  

/l/ 

Moving a second token into the grid, the student says, 

/ŏ/

And pushing the last token into the third square, the student says,

/b/

After the student has isolated each sound with a token, you would ask, 

Show me the /l/ sound. 

Student points to the token that represents /l/. 

Pointing to the second token ask, 

What is this sound? 

Student answers, 

/ŏ/

Pointing to the last token ask, 

What is this sound? 

Student answers, 

/b/

After the questions have been asked, the student pushes aside the tokens and writes the letter(s) (grapheme) for each sound on the box, saying the sounds as they write the letter(s). 

Then, the student writes the entire word on the line next to the boxes.

4. Switch roles with your partner. Repeat the steps above with these words: 

white

thirsty

healing