Automaticity with sounds is critical for reading fluency and comprehension.
Tips 
- If starting with teaching the letter sounds, it is helpful to begin with common letters: f, m, n, r, s, a, t, p, i, b, l and h.
- Be sure to teach qu together as /qu/ (Rather than teaching q alone.)
- Starfall.com can be a good resource for practicing letter sounds.
- Click here for a list of words that can be sounded out and spelled with just the letter cards: l, m, r, t, b, s, a, i.
- Click link for a list of easily confusable voiced/unvoiced letter pairs.
- Learn about working on new words or sounds with flashcards here.
- Click here for a pack of games for the letter sounds that we made quite a while ago. (Print picture cards and labels back to back.)
- Practice the sounds for a couple of minutes at a time, many times each day.
- As you are practicing the letter sounds, work on Playing With Sounds.
- See below for a video to watch to practice the letter sounds. Can your learner beat me in saying each sound?
- Once they know most of the alphabet sounds they can begin step one!
Watch for voiced and unvoiced letter pairs. (No link)
To pronounce each letter in a pair the mouth position is exactly the same, but the vocal cords in the voice box are activated (voiced) for one letter, and the other letter is a breath sound (unvoiced). Put your fingers on the front of your throat to feel when the vocal cords are activated. These are easy letters to mix up!
These pairs include:
b and p
d and t
g and k
v and f
z and s
th (the) and th (thin)
