We know students need to learn the names of the letters and the sounds the letters represent. While many of us tend to teach these skills in isolation, there’s some evidence that teaching letter names in conjunction with letter sounds, articulation, and letter formation can help map the information in the brain. 

We will refer to this process of teaching letter names and sounds simultaneously as sound-letter correspondence. When we teach the relationship between sounds (phonemes) and letters (graphemes), we are teaching students the code to unlock words.

There are 44 sounds in English. These sounds are represented by the 26 letters in the alphabet, either alone or in combination. Students need to learn all of these sounds and the letters that make them in order to become proficient readers.

We teach students that sounds are spelled with graphemes. Some sounds can be spelled with a single letter; however, some sounds are spelled with more than one letter. That means a grapheme can be more than one letter. For example:

• Fun has three phonemes (/f/, /ŭ/, /n/), three letters (‘f’, ‘u’, ‘n’), and three graphemes (‘f’, ‘u’, ’n’). 
• Chop also has three phonemes (/ch/, /ŏ/, /p/), but four letters (‘c’, ‘h’, ‘o’, ‘p’), and three graphemes (‘ch’, ’o’, ’p’).

(There are about 250 graphemes in the English language! That's because some sounds can be spelled by many different letter combinations. For instance, the long 'a' sound can be spelled 'ai', 'ay', 'eigh', 'a_e', and 'ei', among other ways.)

In the video below, watch teacher Carla Miller at Burgess-Peterson Academy in Atlanta practice letter names and sounds work with her kindergarten students. Notice how they name the letter, say the sound, and sky-write the letter formation — three important pathways for building accuracy and fluency.

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Teacher Carla Miller: [music] We're just going to say the name of the letter and the sound. Are you ready?

Carla Miller and Students: 'G', /g/. 'Y', /y/. ['Y' sound is garbled.]

Teacher Carla Miller: Okay, let's do that one more time.

Carla Miller and Students: 'Y', /y/. 'E', /ĕ/.

Teacher Carla Miller: Long sound.

Carla Miller and Students: /Ē/.

Teacher Carla Miller: Good.

Carla Miller and Students: 'Q', 'u', /kw/.

Teacher Carla Miller: Rule.

Carla Miller and Students: 'Q' and 'u' are stuck like glue.

Teacher Carla Miller: So good. [music]

Articulation (Saying the Sounds)

Students need to learn how to produce the sounds accurately. For many, this will come quickly. For others, properly producing and recognizing sounds can be difficult, including for English Learners, because many sounds are made similarly in the mouth. For example, /f/ and /v/ are two sounds that can be confused because the mouth position is the same (teeth and lips are slightly apart, teeth rest on the lower lip, and air is released through the lips). The only difference is that the /f/ sound is voiceless (no vocalization) and the /v/ sound is voiced (vocal cords are used).

The interactive below includes each phoneme in the English language. Everything you need to know is there: how to make the sound, the articulatory features of the sound, common spellings, and keyword pictures. Click directly to the consonants or vowels at the top of the visual.

Here is a handy printable guide for articulation. And if you want to dig deeper, see our skill explainer on teaching articulation.

A Guide for Teaching the Letters and Sounds

This guide includes support for teaching these components and is sequenced in an order comparable to many scope and sequences found in reading programs. You can cut out the sounds strips and paste them to the back of your flash cards for easy reference.

Download Guide

Teaching /b/, Not /bŭ/

It is a common habit for a short 'u' sound to be added to the end of consonant sounds. For example, we correctly sound out tab as /t/, /ă/, /b/, not /tŭ/, /ă/, /bŭ/. Adding /ŭ/ is called “vowelizing” the sound. When we do this, we distort the sound and make blending sounds more difficult. To prevent or correct this habit, teach students to clip the sounds.

In this short video, interventionist Morgan Walton demonstrates a simple tip to help students remember to clip the sounds.

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Morgan Walton: Often our students will add /ǔ/ to the end of sounds. When they do that, it actually turns that one sound into two sounds. For example, /c/ becomes /c/ which is /c/ and /ǔ/. If the word is cat, but students decode the word /c/, /a/, /t/ when they blend the sounds together, the word will be /c/, /a/, /ta/, which is not a recognizable word. So, I'm going to show you a simple, easy tip to help remind students to clip those sounds. Whenever you say sounds that students often add the /ǔ/ to, such as /tǔ/, /dǔ/, /lǔ/, and /pǔ/, teach students to use the imaginary scissors to clip the sound. (She makes a scissor clipping motion with two fingers.). /T/, /d/, /l/, /p/. If you practice this with students consistently, it'll become more natural to say those correct sounds without needing the scissor reminder.

Letter Formation (Writing the Letters)

While students are learning the letter names, they should also learn to form the letters. When students get older, poor handwriting techniques become harder to correct. As the amount of writing that students are expected to produce increases, proper formation needs to become automatic. When it is not automatic, students have to spend time and energy thinking about how to form the letters, and this takes away from their ability to focus on content.

Watch teacher Monica Peevyhouse at Prather-Brown Center in Frederick, Oklahoma, practice writing letters with her students through a sound-letter dictation exercise.

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Monica Peevyhouse: Boys and girls, we're going to work on dictation. I want you to put everything away.

Student: I love that!

Monica Peevyhouse: I know. And get out your pencil. I'm going to have you say a sound, and then I'm going to have you write the letter that spells the sound. Everybody say /f/. What letter spells …?

Students: ‘F’!

Monica Peevyhouse: Very good.

Student: Lowercase or uppercase?

Monica Peevyhouse: We're going to write lowercase … lowercase when we do dictation. We're going to start in the middle of the fence line and the skyline. We're going to go up towards the sky, then curve down to the ground, and we're going to cross at the fence. I want you to move to the second line. And we'll write some more sounds. Everybody say /h/.

Students: /h/.

Monica Peevyhouse: Here we go. I start high in the sky, all the way to the ground. Trace back up.

Everybody say /ŏ/.

Students: /ŏ/.

Monica Peevyhouse: How do we spell /ŏ/?

Students: ‘O'!

Monica Peevyhouse: With an 'o’. Make sure you give yourself a little space. Everybody, I want you to say the sound /a/.

Students: /a/.

Monica Peevyhouse: How do we spell /a/?

Students: ‘A’!

Monica Peevyhouse: With an 'a’. Make sure we give ourselves a little space. Everybody say the sound /m/.

Students: /m/.

Monica Peevyhouse: How do we spell /m/?

Students: ‘M’!

Monica Peevyhouse: With an 'm’. Let's write 'm'. Can we try that one more time? Okay. We have to make sure that we keep our curves underneath the fence line. I want you to start right there. So come straight down to the ground and trace back up. Curve under that fence line. Okay. Trace back up and curve under the fence line. Very good, sister. Good job. Hey, everybody say /t/.

Students: /t/.

Monica Peevyhouse: How do we spell /t/?

Student: ‘T’.

Monica Peevyhouse: With a 't’? Very good. Will you write the letter 't'? Make sure we give ourselves some space. Okay, everybody, you did such a great job. Give your brain a kiss.

Monica Peevyhouse: Say "Love you, brain. Love you, brain.”

Students: Love you, brain!

Narrator: For more information, please visit ReadingUniverse.org. Special thanks to Prather-Brown Center, Frederick Public Schools, and the Oklahoma State Department of Education. Reading Universe is made possible by generous support from Jim and Donna Barksdale, the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation, and two anonymous donors. Reading Universe is a service of WETA, Washington D.C., the Barksdale Reading Institute, and First Book.

Monica Peevyhouse: I'm Monica Peevyhouse, and this is Reading Universe.