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All About Teaching Reading & Writing
Taxonomy
Skill Explainer

4. How to Teach Articulation: Sound Features and Similarities

Articulation Skill Explainer

The Simple View of Reading

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

(active)
Phonological Awareness

A group of skills that enable you to recognize and manipulate parts of spoken words

(active)Articulation

Syllables

Onset-Rime

Phonemic Awareness

Phonics

A method for teaching children the relationship between spoken sounds and written letters so they can learn to decode and encode

Sound-Letter Correspondence

Phonics Patterns

Common letter combinations found in words.

Short Vowels Skill Explainer
Closed Syllables Skill Explainer
Glued Sounds Skill Explainer
Open Syllables Skill Explainer
Spelling with 'c' vs. 'k' Skill Explainer
Consonant Digraphs Skill Explainer
Blends Skill Explainer
‘-ck’ Spelling Rule Skill Explainer
FLoSS(Z) Spelling Rule Skill Explainer
‘y’ as a Vowel Skill Explainer

Coming soon.

    Magic 'e' Skill Explainer
    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
          '-dge' Spelling Rule Skill Explainer
          Consonant '-le' Skill Explainer

          Coming soon.

            Schwa Skill Explainer

            Coming soon.

              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

                  Features of Structured Literacy

                  A systematic and explicit approach to teaching reading based on research

                  Teaching children how to articulate the sounds that make up the English language is a multisensory activity. Children must bring their ears, eyes, voices, tongues, and mouths to the occasion. Often they find this work fun and engaging. 

                  Every sound has features that differentiate it from other sounds. You’ll want to point out these features explicitly to help students hear and feel the differences. 

                  Each time you introduce a sound, talk through these questions with your students:

                  • What is your mouth doing when you make the sound? What is your tongue doing?
                  • Is the airflow coming from your mouth continuously or does it stop quickly?
                  • Is your voice box vibrating? Or is air coming through with no vibration? Touch your throat to feel if there’s a vibration. 

                  Click on the interactive below to hear the /b/ sound and learn about its features.

                  Accurate Sound Pronunciation: Teaching /b/, Not /bŭ/

                  It is a common habit for people to add a short 'u' sound to the end of consonant sounds. For example, they might sound out tab as /tŭ/, /ă/, /bŭ/, rather than correctly as /t/, /ă/, /b/. 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, reading specialist Morgan Walton demonstrates a simple tip for helping students remember to clip the sounds.

                  Video thumbnail for Pronunciation Demo: Clipping Consonant Sounds
                  Produced by Reading Universe, a partnership of WETA, Barksdale Reading Institute, and First Book
                  Hide Video Transcript Show Video Transcript

                  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 /cǔ/, /a/, /tǔ/ when they blend the sounds together, the word will be /cǔ/, /ă/, /tǔ/, 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.

                  Teacher Tip

                  Consider giving students handheld mirrors when you’re going over articulation so that they can see what their mouth looks like when they make the sound.

                  Girl watching her lips in a mirror as she makes letter sounds

                  Teaching Sounds in Groups

                  Speech-language pathologists have found ways to categorize sounds by their features. When students learn these sounds in a group, they may be better able to remember how to make them. 

                  Here are groups commonly used by speech-language experts (though terms may vary). Click through each to learn more: 

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                  Reading Universe is made possible by generous support from Jim & Donna Barksdale; the Hastings/Quillin Fund, an advised fund of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (opens in new window); the AFT (opens in new window); the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation (opens in new window); and three anonymous donors.