Stopping Sound by Sound reading: Part 2

Welcome back!

We are going to explore the first intervention that should be included to stop sound by sound reading.  If you aren't sure how to identify who a sound by sound reader is, and what goes on inside their brain, make sure to check out Part 1 of Stopping Sound by Sound Reading.

The first component (of the three) that should be included is phonemic awareness.

Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, identify and manipulate the individual phonemes of spoken words.  Phonemic awareness is often confused with phonological awareness.  In fact many people use these two terms interchangeably, yet they are not the same.  Lets take a moment and distinguish between the two, and really get our understanding solid.

Phonological awareness is the broad skill that encompasses identifying and manipulating all parts of oral language).  Think of phonological awareness as an umbrella which has skills like rhyming, identifying final, medial and initial sounds, syllabication, etc. all housed underneath.  Phonemic awareness is one of those sub skills under  the phonological awareness umbrella.

Phonemic awareness requires students to be able to manipulate the smallest units of speech. Kilpatrick (2015) says that phonemic awareness is an essential part of the process of storing words in one's sight vocabulary.  A reader's sight vocabulary is any group of words that an individual can decode quickly and effortlessly (high frequency or not).  Phonemic awareness is what allows us to anchor the sounds in a word to the sequence of letters that represent those sounds (Kilpatrick 2015).

We want our students to be quick and accurate decoders, so we MUST explicitly instruct in the area of phonemic awareness!!!

So....how do you do that?

The answer: sound chaining!

Sound chaining is where students receive explicit instruction and practice with phoneme manipulation.  Students will substitute, delete, and add sounds orally.  Students will use colored tiles, blocks, chips, paper squares, etc to represent sounds in words. It is important to note that students ARE NOT looking at any text--this is all done in the world of sound.

Follow the steps below in the graphic to complete the sound chaining exercise with students.  You can also download the steps and a sample word list by clicking here.


I would recommend starting with two sound words and progress to 3, 4 and 5 sound words when your students are ready.  Also, start with changing the beginning sound and progress to final and medial.    Keep in mind DO NOT add letters---as this is a phonemic awareness task and we are just working in the world of sound.

If you are looking for some word lists to complete this sound chaining exercise, check out these free resources:

Word list from On Track Reading
Word list from Really Great Reading
Word list from Hanging Around Primary (TPT Freebie)
Word list from Fun with Phonological Awareness

Also make sure you vist my TPT store to download the steps and sample word list by clicking here.  It's free!