3.2 Explicitly Teaching Letter Names and Sounds
Letter Names and Sounds Skill Explainer
Word Recognition x Language Comprehension = Reading Comprehension
Assessment
The process of measuring students' progress and providing information to help guide instruction
(active)
Word Recognition
The ability to see a word and know how to pronounce it without consciously thinking about it
Phonological Awareness
A group of skills that enable you to recognize and manipulate parts of spoken words
Articulation
The production of speech sounds.
Articulation Skill Explainer
Syllables
Part of a word organized around a single vowel sound
Onset-Rime
Two parts of a word: onset is the initial sound; rime is the vowel and any consonant sounds that follow it.
Phonemic Awareness
The ability to recognize and manipulate individual sounds within a spoken word
Phoneme Segmentation and Blending
- Overview of Phoneme Segmentation and Blending
- When to Teach Phoneme Segmentation and Blending
- How to Teach Segmentation and Blending
- Videos: See It in the Classroom
- Lesson Plans for Phoneme Segmentation and Blending
- Assessing Your Students
- What the Research Says
- Resource Hub: Phoneme Segmentation & Blending
(active)
Phonics
A method for teaching children the relationship between spoken sounds and written letters so they can learn to decode and encode
(active)Sound-Letter Correspondence
The relationship between a phoneme and the grapheme that spells it
Letter Names and Sounds Skill Explainer
- Overview of Letter Names and Sounds
- When to Teach Letter Names and Sounds
- How to Teach Letter Names and Sounds
- Videos: See It in the Classroom
- Lesson Plans for Letter Names and Sounds
- Student Practice Activities
- Assessing Your Students
- For Students Who Need Additional Support
- What the Research Says
- Resource Hub: Videos, Lessons, Activities
Phonics Patterns
Common letter combinations found in words.
Short Vowels Skill Explainer
- Overview of Short Vowel Sounds
- When to Teach Short Vowel Sounds
- How to Teach Short Vowel Sounds
- Videos: See it in the Classroom
- Lesson Plans for Teaching Short Vowels
- Student Practice Activities with Short Vowels
- Assessing Your Students
- For Students Who Need Additional Support
- Resource Hub: Videos, Lessons, Activities
Closed Syllables Skill Explainer
- Overview of Closed Syllables
- When to Teach Closed Syllables
- How to Teach Closed Syllables
- Lesson Plans for Teaching Closed Syllables
- Videos: See It in the Classroom
- Student Practice Activities
- Assessing Your Students
- For Students Who Need Additional Support
- What the Research Says
- Resource Hub: Videos, Lessons, Activities
Glued Sounds Skill Explainer
Open Syllables Skill Explainer
Spelling with 'c' vs. 'k' Skill Explainer
- Overview of Spelling with 'c' vs. 'k'
- When to Teach Spelling with 'c' vs. 'k'
- How to Teach Spelling with 'c' vs. 'k'
- Lesson Plans for Spelling with 'c' vs. 'k'
- Videos: See It in the Classroom
- Student Practice Activities
- Assessing Your Students
- Students Who Need Additional Support
- Resource Hub: Videos, Lessons, Activities
Consonant Digraphs Skill Explainer
‘-ck’ Spelling Rule Skill Explainer
- Overview of the '-ck' Spelling Rule
- When to Teach the '-ck' Spelling Rule
- How to Teach the '-ck' Spelling Rule
- Videos: See It in the Classroom
- Lesson Plans for the '-ck' Spelling Rule
- Student Practice Activities
- Assessing Your Students
- Students Who Need Additional Support
- Resource Hub: Videos, Lessons, Activities
FLoSS(Z) Spelling Rule Skill Explainer
- Overview of the FLoSS(Z) Spelling Rule
- When to Teach the FLoSS(Z) Spelling Rule
- How to Teach the FLoSS(Z) Spelling Rule
- Videos: See It in the Classroom
- Lesson Plans for the FLoSS(Z) Spelling Rule
- Student Practice Activities
- Assessing Your Students
- Students Who Need Additional Support
- Resource Hub: Videos, Lessons, Activities
‘y’ as a Vowel Skill Explainer
Coming soon.
Soft 'c' and Soft 'g' Skill Explainer
Coming soon.
R-Controlled Vowels Skill Explainer
Coming soon.
Vowel Teams and Dipthongs Skill Explainer
Coming soon.
'-tch' Spelling Rule Skill Explainer
- Overview of '-tch' Spelling Rule
- When to Teach '-tch' Spelling Rule
- How to Teach '-tch' Spelling Rule
- Videos: See It in the Classroom
- Lesson Plans for '-tch' Spelling Rule
- Student Practice Activities
- Assessing Your Students
- Students Who Need Additional Support
- What the Research Says
- Resource Hub: Videos, Lessons, Activities
'-dge' Spelling Rule Skill Explainer
- Overview of '-dge' Spelling Rule
- When to Teach '-dge' Spelling Rule
- How to Teach '-dge' Spelling Rule
- Videos: See It in the Classroom
- Lesson Plans for '-dge' Spelling Rule
- Student Practice Activities
- Assessing Your Students
- Students Who Need Additional Support
- What the Research Says
- Resource Hub: Videos, Lessons, Activities
Consonant '-le' Skill Explainer
Coming soon.
Schwa Skill Explainer
Coming soon.
Irregularly Spelled High-Frequency Words
High-frequency words that have a part of their spelling that has to be memorized
Irregularly Spelled High-Frequency Words
Multisyllable Words
Words that have more than one word part
Prefixes
How to add meaningful beginnings to words
Suffixes
How to add meaningful endings to words
Language Comprehension
The ability to understand the meaning of spoken words
Reading Comprehension
The ability to understand the meaning of printed text
Text Considerations
Characteristics of a text that impact the ease or difficulty of comprehension.
Strategies and Activities
How a reader approaches a specific text, depending on their purpose for reading
Reader’s Skill and Knowledge
The skills and knowledge a reader brings to the reading task that are necessary for comprehension
Sociocultural Context
Elements in a classroom that affect how well a child learns to read
Fluency
The ability to read accurately with automaticity and expression
Fluency: Accuracy, then Automaticity
Reading or decoding words correctly (accuracy) and reading at an appropriate rate (automaticity)
Accuracy, then Automaticity Skill Explainer
Coming soon.
Fluency: Expressive Text Reading
Reading characterized by accuracy with automaticity and expression
Expressive Text Reading Skill Explainer
Coming soon.
Writing
The act of putting thoughts into print using transcription and composition skills
Handwriting, Spelling, and Typing
Methods for translating speech into written words
Handwriting and Letter Formation Skill Explainer
Sentence Writing
Composing a complete statement, question, exclamation, or idea with proper grammar and punctuation
Writing a Simple Sentence Skill Explainer
Sentence Expansion Skill Explainer
- Overview of Sentence Expansion
- When to Teach Sentence Expansion
- How to Teach Sentence Expansion
- Video: See It in the Classroom
- Lesson Plan for Sentence Expansion
- Student Practice Activities
- Assessing Your Students
- For Students Who Need Additional Support
- What the Research Says
- Resource Hub: Videos, Lessons, Activities
Features of Structured Literacy
A systematic and explicit approach to teaching reading based on research
When you’re ready to teach, we hope you’ll consider using our lesson plans for teaching sound-letter correspondence. Our research-based plans combine instruction of letter names, letter sounds, articulation, and letter formation.
Here’s a sample lesson plan for introducing the letter ‘b’. It includes carefully sequenced activities and goes in-depth on the skills.
Introducing the Letter ‘Bb’
This lesson plan includes warm-up phonemic awareness activities and all the steps needed to introduce a new letter. A good resource for kindergarten teachers or anyone working on new sounds with early readers.
But here's the big picture. We begin by teaching students how to connect letter sounds (something they already know from oral language) with the visual representation of the letter — going from speech to print. Then, we teach them how to write the letter correctly. By the end of the lesson, your students should be able to recognize, read, and write a new letter!
Teacher Tip
When students are first learning the letters of the alphabet, we teach the upper and lowercase letters at the same time. In addition, when we teach students to write the letter, we teach them how to form the upper and lowercase letter. Once a letter has been explicitly taught and students have had multiple opportunities to practice naming and writing both the upper and lowercase letters, we shift our focus to representing sounds and words with only lowercase letters. That’s because we read and write lowercase letters much more often than we do uppercase letters.
And here’s a brief look at the sequence of activities in the lesson:
- Warm up with a phonological awareness activity to get students hearing sounds. You might sing the alphabet and have students point to each letter on an alphabet chart.
- Explicitly tell students what new letter and sound you will be teaching them. Show the letter, model the sound, have students repeat. For example, “The name of this letter is ‘b’. It makes the sound /b/. Everybody say, /b/."
- Talk about how the sound is made and what the mouth looks and feels like when making it. “When we say /b/, your lips come together and then pop open. This is a lip popper!”
- Play with words that start with the new sound. For instance, say big, baby, boy and have students punch the air when they hear the /b/ sound.
- Show students the letter card with a keyword picture. The ‘b’ card, for example, has a bat. This will help them remember the new sound. Say ‘b’, bat, /b/.
- Write the letter. Show students how to form it on paper. Practice writing it in the air. Talk about how the letter is formed.
- Have students write the letter. After writing it, they should read the sounds back.
- Provide opportunities for independent practice. Use games and make practice fun!
