Page 15 - Reading

Individual letter–sounds
The following are examples of how a teacher may use effective procedures when teaching
letter–sound relationships.
The teacher:
• commences the introduction of letter–sounds soon after phonemic awareness learning
has commenced
• relates letter–sound learning to phonemic awareness, ie explicitly demonstrates the
relationship between phonemes (the sound) and graphemes (the letter or letters
representing the sound)
• models reading the letter–sound, articulating the sound clearly and correctly, eg the
teacher points to the letter a and says ‘this letter makes the sound /a/. Say aaa.’
• provides students with sufficient time to produce letter–sounds, decreasing the length
of the pause over time to increase students’ fluency
• emphasises that sounds can be represented in different ways (Rose 2006)
• highlights visual features of the grapheme to assist with visual processing, for example
– says ‘this letter is tall and sits on the line’
– provides examples and non-examples of the grapheme representing the letter–sound
– draws attention to similarities and differences with other letters
– uses visual mnemonics to assist students to associate a grapheme with a sound,
eg the shape of a snake for ‘s’
• programs multisensory activities to assist students to remember the grapheme
representing a sound, for example:
– interactive whiteboard activities
– match-to-sample
– tracing/copying/writing activities (eg sky writing)
• provides sufficient practice to assist students to identify letter–sounds with fluency.
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Support Materials for Students with Special Education Needs
English K–6
Reading
IMPLEMENTATION