3.2 Explicitly Teaching Glued Sounds

Now it’s time to teach! 

It’s important to remember that you should not teach all the glued sounds at once. If you’re working with kindergartners, you’ll typically teach '-an' and '-am' in separate lessons, not too far apart. And you’ll teach '-all' later in the year. 

The '-ng' and '-nk' sounds are generally introduced in first grade. In the case of those sounds, you can teach all the '-ng' sounds at one time and all the '-nk' sounds at another time. (See the when to teach section.)

You can watch a classroom video of '-am' and '-an' lesson and find full lesson plans for each individual glued sound in our lessons plan section.

To begin the lesson on '-an', you might say, 

Today we are going to start learning about glued sounds. Glued sounds are tricky because they are made up of more than one sound but it is hard to pull those sounds apart. The vowel does not say its normal sound in a glued sound. That’s why we learn these sounds as chunks.

Show students the flash card with the keyword picture card for '-an'. Point to the picture of the van on the card. Say,

This is a van. I hear /v/, /an/. We know the sounds for 'a' and 'n', but when they come together, the 'n' doesn’t let the 'a' say its true short sound. So, when we see 'a', 'n', we are going to say /an/.

Show students that when they see the flash card with the keyword picture, they will say the letter names, then keyword picture, then the sound. Like this: 'a', 'n', van, /an/. Have students repeat, 'a', 'n', van, /an/.

Then show students the flash card with just the letters 'an'. Tell them that when they see that card they are just going to say /an/.

Next, you’ll use your letter flash cards without pictures to play with words that have glued sounds. 

Put down the 'an' card. Have students say /an/. Next, place the 'c' in front of the 'an' card. Have students say the sounds /c/, /an/ and then say the word can.

Then place the 'f' card on top of the 'c' card. Have students say the sounds for each card /f/, /an/ and then read the word fan.

Repeat the process making these words:

• man
• ran
• van
• pan
• tan
• can

Remember: when tapping out words with glued sounds, students should not tap each individual sound in the glued part. Instead, they should use a grabbing motion to represent that chunk. For example, when tapping out the word man, they should first tap /m/, then make a grabbing motion with their fist and say /an/.

During the dictation part of the lesson, you will dictate a word like tan and students will repeat the word. Then with the students, you will tap and say /t/ and then grab and say /an/. Then students will write the word.