7 Tips for Teaching Sounds

14/11/2018

The little steps to reading success...

Teaching children to read is no easy task! It is a subject area that requires teachers to have a great amount of knowledge and expertise. I am not an expert in linguistics (few teachers are), but I have spent a lot of time researching what is involved in learning to read, all the time trying to see things from a child's perspective. We all know reading is a skill fundamental to succeeding in school and life, so as an educator it is my responsibility to make sure I am confident teaching children to read and that my teaching is reflective of current practice and research. Most importantly I want to do my best to ensure that no child is left behind on the journey to reading success.

If you don't know how teach something confidently, research it!

I find teaching children to read very technical and challenging and I wasn't confident that following the Jolly Phonics program was enough for me to feel I was teaching children systematic phonics, in the best way possible. So I went and researched this area myself and I have found one recurrent issue that is consistently addressed across almost everything I read. Research that states correct pronunciation of phonemes (sounds) is essential if all children are to be able to blend, spell and manipulate the sounds within words fluently. Incorrect enunciation of phonemes can make it particularly challenging for children who already find reading difficult or children who have English as an additional language. So for the purpose of this post I wanted to address the importance of correct enunciation of phonemes in order to develop a child's phonemic awareness. As a teacher or parent, if you are not tuned into your own phonemic awareness you may find it difficult to teach phonics and blending successfully.

Before we start...

What is phonological awareness? This is the broader awareness of sounds in the English language, such as words, syllables, onset and rime and rhyme. I have discussed these aspects of early reading skills in detail in my previous post on phonological awareness.

What is a phoneme? A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in speech. There are 44 phonemes in the English language. For example in the word p-i-g there are three phonemes. A single phoneme can be represented by one or more letters (graphemes) of the alphabetic code, e.g. "m" as in the sound "mmmm" is a single phoneme. The digraph "sh" is one single phoneme, as is the trigraph "igh" as in night.

What is phonemic awareness? It is important to understand the difference between phonemic awareness and phonics. Phonemic awareness is the ability to identify, think about and manipulate the individual phonemes that make up a spoken word. Explicate teaching of phonemic awareness will only ever involve oral and aural processing skills and does not involve the visual processing of print. Teachers will often use a picture but not text to communicate a word during tasks. Phonemic awareness is a critical skill that is a precursor to phonics. So if you find yourself teaching the jolly phonics program in the early days of Junior infants, it's likely you've skipped this essential skill. For activities around phonemic awareness see Step 5 of my post onphonological awareness.

What is phonics? Phonics is the connection between phonemes to one or more graphemes (letters). So, when we are teaching phonics we are making a link between phonemes and graphemes as an abstract way of communicating through reading and writing. Of course phonics relies greatly on a child's phonemic awareness so if they are not well attuned in phonemic awareness, it doesn't matter how well they link a sound to it's print, they wouldn't be able to hear the word when blending.

Know your sounds!

Voiced and Unvoiced Sounds

Precise enunciation of phonemes is fundamental if a child is going to learn to decode and blend words successfully. Unfortunately, it is often at this stage where both teachers and parents can go wrong. You may or may not be familiar with the term voiced sounds and unvoiced sounds. These terms refer to sounds that are carried on vocal vibrations and sounds that do not make any vocal vibrations. The phonemes in the image in bold are voiced and in italics are unvoiced. The video at the end of this post demonstrates correct enunciation of these letter sounds. You can click on this image to download a copy of these sounds.

Feeling your sounds...

When assisting children with how to distinguish between voiced and unvoiced phonemes encourage them to feel for vibrations:

Place your fingertips on your throat, now say the sound "v". When said correctly, you will HEAR the sound and FEEL the vibrations of your vocal cords on your fingertips.
Now say the sound "f" do you feel anything now? When said correctly, you will NOT hear your voice, only your breath and you will NOT feel the vibrations of your vocal cords on your fingertips.

A simple lesson to introduce voiced and unvoiced sounds...

A nice way to introduce the vocal element of voiced letters and unvoiced letter with children is to do a simple activity on sounds and vocal vibrations. I use the book below from Get Epic and just simplified it a little for the junior infants. I also cover 'sound' in Science at the same time as introducing phonemes. It is important to always use the correct terminology with the children so don't be afraid to use the correct terms "voiced" and "unvoiced".

Continuous and Stop Sounds

Sounds can also be categorised into stretchy (continuous sounds) and bouncy (stop sounds). These terms refer to sounds that can be stretched out without distorting or changing the sound (continuous sounds) and sounds that cannot be stretched and come to a instant stop (stop sounds). The phonemes in the image in bold are continuous , stretchy sounds and in italics are bouncy, stop sounds.

A simple lesson to introduce stretchy sounds...

A simple activity to introduce stretchy sounds is to use an elastic band and model stretching out continuous sounds as in the video below. This activity will be practiced later when teaching children to blend smoothly without gaps but makes the perfect phonemic activity because it doesn't involve print. Remember after you stretch out a sound to "bounce it back" or say it quickly.

The most common mistake teachers make when teaching sounds...

What is a schwa? Often teachers accidentally add a "uh" sound to the end of consonant phonemes, this "uh" sound is called a schwa and should be avoided. If students hear this and try to imitate it when blending or segmenting they will find it difficult to hear the correct phonemes in words, for example muh-ah-tuh sounds nothing like m-a-t when pronounced clearly and blended. As a result they will struggle to hear the word when blending. For example a common mistake I hear is the phoneme "p" pronounced as "puh" or "sh" as "shuh". Below is a video where I demonstrate correct enunciation of phonemes. Some letters are impossible to isolate without adding a schwa, like g, d, b (try saying these sounds with the short vowel sounds next to them and the schwa all but disappears i.e. ba, be, bi, bo, bu the last sound is what you say when you isolate a 'b') however in this video I suggest that j, w, y can be said without the 'uh' sounds making them easier to blend.

Why do people add the schwa?

They’ve been taught wrong - Some teachers and parents may have been taught poorly or not at all. In Ireland most teachers have only ever used Jolly Phonics. I have listened to the people offering training in this program and the often add a heavy schwa to consonant sounds, thus many people trained in JP may not have been exposed to the importance of correct enunciation. Programs like Read Write Inc or Letters & Sounds specifically teach correct sound enunciation but unfortunately (probably due to lack of investment into early years teaching in Ireland) no other phonic program seem to have made it across the water to Irish shores. Not that I'm aware of anyway.
Teachers trying to isolate an unvoiced phoneme. Sometimes when teachers try and stress those quiet stop sounds like "p" they are tempted to add the schwa to make the sound stretch or louder saying "puh". Don't do this!
Accents - There can be slight variations in sounds across accents and dialects but generally all but 4 or 5 sounds are taught consistently across all accent.
Noisy classroom - I do my phonics lesson first thing in the morning when the children are fresh and ready to learn. The phonics lesson is very much a listening lesson to start and it is important that the room is absolutely silent unless teacher instructs otherwise. Good phonemic activities will not be possible in a noisy classroom and sounds cannot be said clearly if a teacher is trying to carry his/her voice over a noisy class. The children know that as the day progresses so to does the playful learning so they don't mind the concentration and focus required for our phonological awareness or phonics lessons.

Does it really matter if you use a schwa?
The answer is ABSOLUTELY! That's like saying does it really matter if we call red, pink? Of course it matters that we try our very best to pronounce sounds correctly. I have asked teachers why they add the schwa and the only answers I received are "it's just the way we've always said them" or "there are different ways to say sounds" or "I don't see that is makes a difference". None of these reasons warrant a teacher to continue mispronouncing sounds. Apart from the great body of research, both past and present that tells teachers of the importance of correct sound enunciation I have my own experience to draw on. The reason why I am so adverted to the schwa began when I first learnt the technique of smooth, continuous blending, without any gaps (stretching out the continuous sounds as mentioned later in this post). This type of proper blending cannot be done if sounds have been distorted by the schwa.
Yes, the well able children could probably bypass the distorted sounds and hear the simple cvc words, but this will inevitably become a problem as the words they read become more complex. But the children who really benefit from precise blending are the children who have difficulty learning to read, poor auditory processing and the EAL children. The children who can't draw on that bank of familiar words to take the sound muh/a/tuh and think "oh ya, that word sounds a little like a word "mat" I already have in my word bank". So smooth precise blending means children can read words they have never heard before, which in turn helps them to learn new words. I have seen the difference in children's ability to learn to read using smooth, precise blending and nothing compares to the first time they blend those sounds together perfectly and say a word. Children who otherwise would be left behind on the journey to reading.

What helps teachers and children enunciate sounds purely?

Tip 1: awareness of your mouth movements when making sounds. Really exaggerate the breath, lips, teeth, and upper palate movements that are involved in making sounds. Talk children through every step that's involved in making a sound. The voiced phonemes mentioned above do not produce a push of air from the mouth; whereas, the unvoiced phonemes will produce a push of air from the mouth. The voiced consonants and their unvoiced counterparts shown below will create the same kinaesthetic formation in the mouth (tongue, lips & teeth) and are distinguished only by whether they are voiced or unvoiced. Try making the sounds on the chart below and you will see how the position of your mouth doesn't change, the only difference between the letter in bold and the ones in italics are vocal vibrations. It is important to exaggerate the movement of your mouth as you make a sound. Ask children to look to where your lips, tongue, jaw move when getting ready to make a sound and how they move during the sound. If a child's mouth is in the wrong position the sound will come out wrong.

Tip 2: consonant vowel blending. Some sounds rely greatly on the vowel next to them to determine the ''strength'' of their sound. The activity in the video below is particularly useful to practice when teaching consonant sounds. Practice blending consonant phonemes with the five short vowels, making one continuous blend without gaps e.g. pa, pe, pi, po, pu. I do this activity daily with each new consonant sounds and the children quickly before fluent blending cv sounds. When the focus is phonemic awareness I will practice this task orally by having two children come up in front of the class and represent each sound. As they say their sounds the children blend them together. When we move onto phonics the children easily read these familiar blends (or any other cv blend)smoothly and with ease.

Tip 3: One sound, one movement. My mouth will move once for each phoneme (some sounds are made using two phomemes like q, x) This will be important when identifying how many phonemes i in a word. For example for the word m/a/t your mount will move three times. For the word sheep your mouth will move 3 time, once for each phoneme. Have the children place their fingers on their jaw to count the movements for each sound.
Tip 4: Say the sound once! Say the sound once and avoid this unnecessary repetition of sound like saying ppppppppppppp. It is of no benefit and even obstructive to hearing a sound clearly. I find it very annoying when trying to encourage a child to blend a cvc word and they blurt out a sound three times. Studies have shown it is of no benefit to learning sounds.
Tip 5: Practice! lots and lots of practice and self-correction, I still catch myself out sometimes! The children will be your best correctors here, I teach my children to identify the correct and incorrect sounds and I also teach them to correct adults who say the wrong sound. As a school it is absolutely critical for all the teachers to be enunciating the letter sounds correctly and consistently throughout the school. This can be difficult however, and for different reason teachers may have incorrect enunciation and correcting this can be a sensitive subject amongst staff. I suggest requesting a visit from the PDST literacy team and having them discuss the importance of correct enunciation.
Tip 6: Jolly Phonics App Encourage parents to use the jolly phonics app to learn precise enunciation.
Tip 7: Alpha blocks I'm not a big fan of adding to the crazy amount of time children spend in front of screens. But I have to say Alpha Blocks is a fantastic way for the children to practice correct letter enunciation. The children love it and I occasionally play it on the board on rainy days during lunch. It has really helped those children who find it difficult to concentrate during lessons, yet seem glued to the screen when Alpha Blocks is on. A necessary evil I think.

Phonemes (sounds) and graphemes (letter symbols) have two very different roles in literacy. Sometimes when they have been taught simultaneously from day one, teachers and children never really understand the explicate role that each plays in the building blocks to literacy. Sounds come first, if children can really tune into sounds then the next "building blocks" to literacy will sit perfectly, with little effort, on top of those strong foundations. After reading this post I hope you'll agree, learning to isolate and manipulate sounds correctly is a massively complex task and that is before you even attempt to link these sounds to letters. A child who has fluent knowledge of phonemes and how they are formed and manipulated, will easily progress to understanding that a phonemes can be communicated through one or more graphemes for reading or writing and that is where we progress to phonics.
Weather you decide to teach phonemes before phonics or go straight into teaching phonics is your decision. There is research to support both methods and it is important to move children onto text as soon as they are tuned into sounds. But maybe try to incorporate plenty of phonemic activities and don't solely rely on print as the only cue to working with sounds. Whatever route to reading you choose just make sure that you teach sounds in their purest form.

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