2. When to Teach Glued Sounds

Once students have been explicitly taught sound-letter correspondence for the letters of the alphabet, we can introduce glued sounds. We typically teach one glued sound at a time unless the child is older and can handle numerous glued sounds at once. 

In the continuum we are using at Reading Universe, we introduce glued sounds after teaching students about short vowels and closed syllables.

Grade Level

We begin teaching '-am' and '-an' in kindergarten. Some teachers will also introduce '-all' toward the end of kindergarten. We continue to review these in first grade to ensure accuracy and automaticity with these glued sounds.

We typically teach ‘-ang’, ‘-ing’, ‘-ong’, ‘-ung’, ‘-ank’, ‘-ink’, ‘-onk’, and ‘-unk’ in first grade. You can teach them anytime after you’ve taught digraphs, or wherever the program you use at your school dictates. In first grade, you can teach all of the ‘-ng’ glued sounds together, and then teach all of the ‘-nk’ glued sounds at a separate time. 

If you teach older students and you feel they can learn them all at the same time, you can teach the eight ‘-ng’ and ‘-nk’ glued sounds together.

Prerequisite Skills

• Sound-letter correspondence for all of the letters of the alphabet