Beginning Sound Activity Cards

I made these fun 'pencil' themed beginning sound activity cards for my sweet Sam yesterday. They can be used with pegs (clothespins), dry-erase markers or counters. Your kiddos can say the names of the pictures and identify the beginning sound of each before deciding which ones start with the featured letter.

It got me thinking about teaching beginning sounds and 5 little considerations to explore when you are about to embark on teaching these letter sounds for the first time.

1. Order of learning

In what order will you introduce each new letter sound to your students? A common way to introduce them is to reveal them to students based on their frequency of use in the English language. Here is an order I have always used:

A, M, S, T, I, F, D, R, O, G, H, L, U, C, N, K, B, V, E, P, J, W, Y, X, Q and Z.

2. Don't reveal all

Create a word wall that features a poster/picture/diplay of each letter-sound you will teach. Cover them up with brightly coloured paper. As you teach each one, take the cover off. It is like a surprise for the kids each day. They LOVE it! And if you are a Type A teacher, you can create a little pattern with your cover sheets!

3. Say it louder

When doing oral and aural activities for beginning sounds, I have always made the first sound LOUD. So - when sounding out 'cat' for example, I would sound out c-a-t and make the first sound significantly louder than the other two. It really helps!

4. Writing

When learning to write the letter to match the sound - put a little dot in the starting position so your students have a solid reference point for remembering the order of strokes to correctly write the letter. I find the fonts with multiple dots and arrows to track EVERY stroke of the letter just confuses students. One starting dot has worked best for me.

Word Family Rainbow Writing

5. Blend away

Traditionally, programs have introduced letter sounds in isolation and students do not begin working on words until most of them have been taught. I have found it best to start working on making words as early as possible. After you have introduced 'a' and 'm' - you can show students how to blend them and teach them 'am'. Introduce the sight word 'I' and then you are off to making a sentence 'I am....'. Your students will LOVE it! As you teach each new beginning sound, add a new magnetic letter to your teaching board and get students blending to make words as soon as possible. 

Our Teacher Word Book is a handy reference for when you need to think of words to make on-the-spot! 

If you would like to take a closer look at my new activity cards, find them in my TpT store HERE

And more 'alphabet' resources HERE