Teaching Phoneme Isolation
The sounds in words are called phonemes. Students need to be able to hear the individual sounds in words in order to be able to spell and map the words. Students who muffle sounds in speaking end up skipping those sounds in spelling. The identifying of initial sound is usually one of the first skills children learn. Even before they start school many children can identify the sound at the beginning of words and or objects. This skill is helpful for students to start spelling words and even to help with beginning decoding. Isolating phonemes is an important skill.
After the beginning sound the next sound that is isolated is the ending sounds. This is an important skill especially for spelling. If students drop the final sound when speaking they will drop the final sound when spelling. The child that says “I went wif her” will spell with by using a f. Students need to hear the sounds and say them correctly. This becomes especially tricky when students learn consonant blends. Words like drink, crust and bent are hard for students because they do not pronounce each sound so they cannot isolate or spell those sounds. This resource may help you teach beginning sounds.
What Is Orthographic Mapping
There has been a great deal of discussion around orthographic mapping. This is the imprint of words into the brain so that the word becomes a sight word that is recognized instantly. Students need to build up their sight word bank so they can instantly recognize many words.
Teaching initial and final phonemes requires practice. Students need direct and explicit instruction in these skills so they can understand the skill. This work should be all oral at first. After the students can do it orally you can introduce the words and have the students write the ending sound or the beginning sound. This is perfect for a center activity or homework worksheet because students should be able to complete independently. This resource will help you teach ending sounds to your students.
Children can count the sounds in words that you dictate. They can name pictures and count the sounds. You can make this multisensory with blocks, playdough or magnetic letters. The more practice the easy encoding will be. When I dictate a word for spelling i have the students repeat the words and name the sounds. This isolating of phonemes helps the children know what letters to write to spell words. This practice needs to become so second nature that they can do it independently and even mentally without having to tap. When a child can recognize and spell a word without tapping and without stretching out the sounds this word is orthographically mapped. You can not actually teach orthographic mapping. According to David Kilpatrick (2019) what can be taught is phonemic awareness and phonics skills which enable orthographic mapping. Phoneme isolation is a skill all students need.
Don’t forget to sign up for the phonemic awareness resource.