Phonics Friday: Letter & Sound Sorts

Happy 4th of July friends!!!

Today's post will focus on:
Letter and Sound Sorts

Why sort use letter and sound sorts?

Initial sound sorting is the very first step of phonemic awareness.  It's goal is to help students learn phoneme isolation, identification, and categorization. Students are taught to state whole words and then isolate the beginning consonant sound and then match it to other words that have a matching sound.

What are the first steps? 
Model, Model, Model for the students.
Demonstrate how to state a word and isolate the beginning sound.
(especially the at risk kiddos)

 

Then have the students practice sorting with their own cards or objects. Below are some cool examples on using objects for beginning sound sorts.

 

The next step is independent practice and assessment. 

Students need to be able to isolate the beginning sound without support.  This can be assessed in a variety of ways.  

Here are a few examples:

The I Spy sheets were created by Deanna Jump.  She has a few sheets available for free from her Alphapalooza pack.  

Click the picture to download.

  

This is a Facebook freebie from Creating and Teaching.  I love that  laminate and velcro can be used to make this great resource reusable.

Click the picture to download.

 

What do you do if a student is just not getting it?

The Florida Center of Reading Research has wonderful materials to use as intervention tools for at risk students.  They have a large variety of activities available for FREE.  Click here for materials that target beginning sounds.

Last week I promised you a little freebie.  So here it is friends:)   A sort for sounds /m/ and /n/.  This is the middle version of my latest differentiating alphabet sort packs.  

This sort can be used to assess whether a student can independently differentiate the sounds m & n.  Click the picture below to download your goodie.

Also snag my differentiated BTF sorts for 50% off this weekend.

That's all for today folks!!  I hope your fourth is full of food, fireworks and family!!  If you have posts you would like to see in the coming weeks please leave a comment below.