Do you have a sound chart in your classroom? In your reading intervention area? For more effective lessons, print Reading Elephant’s FREE sound chart! I’m so excited to offer our sound chart. If you analyze the chart, you can begin to learn English phonics rules. Also, students make faster, more lasting progress, if they memorize where each phonics sound is located on the chart.
Reading Elephant has a shop full of systematic phonics books. The sound chart (below) explains how our systematic books progress. Also, if you’re a teacher that hasn’t yet learned English phonics rules, you can study this chart. It’ll help you tremendously! Here is the FREE teacher sound chart (click the link):
See below for visual of the chart. To print the teacher sound chart, click the link above.
How to use the teacher sound chart
The teacher sound chart can help you teach your student to read. If you’re new to phonics, you don’t have to learn everything at once. I’m a fan of just in time education: if you’re a neophyte, simply start with short vowels and letter sounds. Learn how to hold continuous sounds, clip stop sounds, identify short vowel words, and print our short vowel books. Learn everything just in time.
If you’re a beginner and you try to learn everything at once, you’ll likely complicate lessons, try to fit in content that your student should really learn later, and you’ll lose the systematic component so key to effective instruction. It’s okay to learn phonics right along with your student.
Learn phonics? Yes, it’s likely that phonics has become so automatic that you’ve forgotten the sub-steps your brain needs to disentangle and reassemble words. You no longer say sounds in isolation, read slowly or identify phonics units. It’s also almost certainly likely that you’ve completely forgotten how you learned how to read. You may fall victim to selective memory: the process of taking one memorable episode and attaching too much significance to it.
For example, you may only remember the time you read a full book. You may have forgotten the more tedious detail that you had to hold the short a sound for 5 seconds across 20 lessons. In other words, don’t use your memory on how you learned to read to help your student. Treat phonics as a brand new field, even if that feels counterintuitive. Also, struggling readers need explicit, systematic phonics instruction. Don’t expect them to catch on.
Guide your student gradually. Once you go through the process once, you’ll be a better instructor next time. You’ll get better and better with practice.
Look to the right word to maintain your accuracy
If you’ve forgotten a phonics sound, look to the right on the teacher sound chart. For example a_ says /aaaa/ as in hat, igh says /i/ as in light, ea says /ea/ as in seal. Use the sound chart to help you maintain accuracy. This is critical: if you get a phonics sound wrong, you cannot expect your student to be accurate!
If you want to improve your pedagogy, learn which sounds you can hold continuously. These are sounds you can say for a long time without sound distortion. For example, you can say a_ as in hat for a long time: aaaa. You cannot say /d/ for a long time without adding an “uh.” Thus, clip the “uh” and simply say d–.
You cannot hold igh. You can hold oo. You cannot hold ay. You can hold ea. Begin to learn which sounds you can hold without sound distortion. Teach your student to hold these continuous sounds.
Sound chart for students
Your student needs a sound chart too. I repeatedly emphasize the importance of flashcards: even though they’re not fancy, they allow your student to memorize the sound, not the sounds location. Thus, use flashcards as your student gradually goes through our phonics books. Mix the flashcards up every lesson!
However, sound charts are critical to instruction too. Also, you must use them differently than flashcards. On sound charts (only those that follow research, like the one below) your student should memorize the location of each phonics sound. Why?
Firstly, the phonics sounds are organized into categories. Your student will begin to see that (for example) all the long e sounds are together. In addition, your student will be able to contrast short e and long e: they’re in different spots, and this helps lock the disparate sounds into memory. Here is the FREE student sound chart (click the link):
See below for visual of the chart. To print the teacher sound chart, click the link above.
How to use the sound chart
Set aside 2 minutes of your phonics lesson. Point to the phonics sounds your student has already learned on the chart. As you point, have your student say the sound. This simple activity will help your student learn each phonics sounds location on the chart. This is beneficial. As a result, your student will begin to categorize sounds together, as in ee, ea, and ____y. With this knowledge (that long e has 3 spellings), your student will be a better reader and speller.
Also, (and this is important), bring your student to the chart every time he makes an error. EVERY TIME. Since your lessons are leveled, you shouldn’t have to bring him to the chart all the time. However, for approximately 30% of the words in direct phonics instruction, you’ll need to point to the chart. Here’s a sample:
TEXT: seal
[student says sell]
Underline or point to his error.
TEACHER: Let’s find this sound. [point to ea on the chart]. Say the sound.
STUDENT: ea
TEACHER: In the word.
STUDENT: ea
TEACHER: From the beginning.
STUDENT: seal
Use the sound chart for error correction.
Do I need a wall sound chart?
There’s been a lot in the news about wall sound charts. Do you really need one? Print the student sound chart out for all of your students. A wall sound chart can help you teach. For example, if one of your class makes an error, you don’t have to go around pointing to all of their sound charts. You can simply point to your wall sound chart in front of the whole class.
Thus, try to recreate the student sound chart on one of your classroom walls.
Also, make sure your students have the student sound chart pdf in this post. Send it home with their homework. Give one to parents. The best way to help your student is to educate their parents on error correction. Plus, a lot of parents really want to know how to help their child.
I’m so excited to offer these sound charts! The charts also help explain Reading Elephant systematic phonics books.
Hi! Thank you for this tool. this would help me a lot with my students and tutees in letting them learn to spell too.
You’re welcome!
NICE!!!!! i use to have to make these by hand…before the computer and the internet.