• Introduce the phoneme with a semantic representation. (see Sound Associations)

• Demonstrate the production of the phoneme (mouth shape, tongue, etc.).

• Sound repetition activities (iteration) help children begin working toward full segmentation by isolating the first sound in a word. Eg. K-K-K- Katie. Popular songs may be modified by the teacher to include iterations, e.g Pop Goes the Weasel – last line could be p-p-p-p-Pop goes the weasel!

• Use any popular melody and sing it using that sound as the lyrics. (eg. London Bridge sung as /b/-/b/-/b/-/b/...

• Learn an alliterative tongue twister featuring the phoneme. (Peter Piper)

• Use a puppet to isolate the initial phoneme in the alliterative words. (bear says blue berries and black berries in the bushes... brown, black...)

• Stretch the phoneme to explore its articulation, using an elastic band or a stretchable action figure as a visual demonstration.

• Isolate the phoneme in the final (or medial for vowels) position of other example words.

• Practice sound-to-word matching for the target phoneme, first as a yes/no game (e.g. "Do you hear /n/ in next?"), and then as a forced choice (e.g. "Do you hear /n/ in old or new?)

• Listen for the sound in stories, poems, or songs.

• Find objects in the room that have that sound.

• Use different voices to produce the sound (e.g. baby, troll, queen, tyrannosaurus...)

• Categorize or sort pictures based on beginning or ending sounds.

Note: Teach the sixteen consonants that have only one sound first: b, d, f, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, q, r, t, v, x, z; then the c, g, s, w, y.  Follow this with the vowels: sometimes they say their own names, and other times they have a short sound. Next, the digraphs that have two letters for one sound: ch, sh, th, wh.

• Rhyme Game: Model rhyming first, by saying, "I can rhyme a word with /at/ that begins with /f/. Can you tell me what it is?" Fat. "I can rhyme a word with /at/ that begins with /s/. Can you tell me what it is?

• Initial rhyme recognition can be reinforced by direct modeling of instances (nose-rose) and non-instances (bed-car) of rhyming word pairs. To make a game of this, use a happy face symbol for a rhyming pair and a sad face symbol for non-rhyming pair; or a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. It is important to have the children repeat the rhyming pairs to reinforce the verbal production of rhymed words.

• Pictures can be used as visual cues for rhyme recognition activities and can be used during the modeling phase of instruction. The teacher can present 3 pictures and ask the child to select and say the two that rhyme. A variation would be to display two nonrhyming pictures and have the child select the one that rhymes with a word being said by the teacher.

• Odd Word Out is a game in which the teacher presents four words, three of which rhyme, and the child determines which word is the odd one that doesn't belong with the others. (e.g. zveed, bead, pill, seed)

• Rhyming Pair Concentration: Name the pictures out loud. Find two that rhyme.

• Snap and Clap Rhymes:  Begin with a simple clap and snap rhythm. Get more complex as children move along in rhyming. Clap Clap Snap fall Clap Clap Snap ball                                                     Clap Clap Snap hall Clap Clap Snap small

• A variation is the "I say, you say..." game: I say fat. You say ___. I say red. You say ___.

• Rhyming Word Sit Down: Children walk around in a big circle taking one step each time a rhyming word is said by the teacher. When the teacher says a word that doesn't rhyme, the children sit down: she, tree, flea, spree, key, bee, sea, went

• Rhyming words in songs, poems and big books: As you do shared reading with the students, pause at the end of phrases and let the students supply the rhyming words. After you have read the poem together, ask the children to find the rhyming words. Generate other words that rhyme with these rhyming words.

• Silly Rhymes Big Book: Use rimes (roots of word families) and rhyme charts around the classroom to create silly poems with the class. Write the one line rhyme with the whole class in big letters on large chart paper. Read aloud several times. Use different voices. Have children sound and clap words. Have a child illustrate the rhyme. Repeat each week for another set of rimes.

• Some rhyming patterns to start with: at (s, f, m, r), ip (z, l, r, sh), an (f, m, r, v), eat (f, m, n, s, h), et (s, v, m, n), ock (l, r, s), ick (s, l, th, t), ay (l, r, s, p), ee (m, s, b, t), ame (f, n, g, t), an (f, c, v, p), ed (b, f, r, l), ag (b, n, s, r), ick (k, l, p, s), all (b, c, f, t), ell (b, s, f, sh), ine (d, f, m, sh), ack (b, j, qu, t), and (b, h, l, s).

• Children are asked to decide which of several words begins with a given sound or to generate a word beginning with a particular sound (can use picture cards or small objects). You may ask for a specific sound like /s/; you may ask students to generate their own examples of words beginning with the sound like /s/. Teachers say the phoneme sounds not the letter names.
• Word to word matching: Do pen and pipe begin with the same sound?

• Blending requires children to manipulate individual sounds by combining them to form a word. Given a series of isolated sounds (e.g. /b/-/a/-/t/), children blend them together (e.g., bat)
• Guessing Game: Yopp (1992b) "What am I thinking of?" This game encourages children to blend orally spoken sounds together. The teacher tells the children a category and then speaks in a segmented fashion the sounds of a particular item in that category. For eg. category of clothing – sounds may be /h/-/a/-/t/ Children’s attempts to blend the sounds together are applauded and the game continues. Eventually, children become the leaders and take turns providing their peers with segmented words for blending. Categories may include theme words as an extension of integrated literacy experiences.
• Use picture cards with pictures turned away until children have guessed the picture
• Use a grab bag, peeking inside and saying, "I see a toy /d/-/u/-/k/ in here. Who knows what I see?"
• Use the lyrics to "If You’re Happy" substituting the words "If you think you know this word, shout it out!"
• Pronounce the sounds individually (the slow way) in a word and ask the child to say the word the fast way. Listen: f-oo-t-b-a-ll is the slow way and football is the fast way. Now your turn. Here is the slow way, can you say it the fast way?
• Blend onsets and rimes: model blending an initial sound onto a word by using a jingle, "It starts with /l/ and it ends with /ight/, put it together and it says light." When they have the idea, the children supply the final word. An element of excitement can be created by using children's names for this activity and asking each child to recognize and say his/her own name when it is presented, "It starts with /b/ and it ends with etsy, put it together and it says Betsy."
• Have a puppet who speaks "funny" by saying words syllable by syllable, or phoneme by phoneme for the children to figure out. The puppet can have children guess, /f/-/i/-/sh/ ... I said fish! or tri-cer-a-tops ... I said triceratops!

• Children are given a word, picture, or object and asked to tell what sound occurs at the beginning, middle, or end of the word.
• Sound Snacks (A Tasty Game): Place two paper cups on a table next to a bowl of peanuts, M & M's, raisins, cheerios, or whatever snack you want to have. Label one cup "B" for beginning and the other "E" for ending. As the child to identify the beginning or ending consonants in words you name by placing one piece of snack in the correct cup. Eg. "Where is the /t/ sound in wet?" (End), "Where is the /b/ sound in bed?" (Beginning). Children may eat the snack if they put it in the correct cup. Some words like pop, treat, tent, Mom will allow the children to put a treat in both cups and eat more than one treat at a time.
• Show the children a picture (dog) and asking the children to identify the correct word out of three: "Is this a /mmmm/-og, a /d/d/d/-og, or a /sssss/-og?" A variation is to ask if the word has a particular sound: "Is there a /d/ in dog? This can be switched to "Which sound does dog start with- /d/, /sh/, or /l/? This sequence encourages the children to try out the three onsets with the rime to see which one is correct.

• How many sounds do you hear in the word cake?
• To count syllables in words, activities can be used such as clapping hands, tapping the desk, or marching in place to the syllables in children's names (Ma-ry), items in the immediate environment (win-dow), or words from a favorite story (wi-shy, wa-shy).
• Clap your hands or tap finger on the back of your other hand to mark each sound or syllable heard.
• Take One Thing From the Box: Collect a number of objects in a box or bag, making sure that the numer of syllables in the name differ. A child selects an object, name it (e.g., pencil). All of the children should repeat the object's name as they clap out its syllables. Then ask how many syllables were heard. A variation would be to use pictures.

• What sound do you hear in meat that is missing in eat?
• I can make a new word from flat by taking out the /l/ sound? Can you guess what it is?
• I can take the /k/ sound out of monkey and make a new word. Can you tell me what it is?
• I can change the last sound of a word to make a new word: take the /p/ off the end of map and put a /d/ sound intead. Can any one tell me what the new word is?
• Play a game of "sound take-away". The teacher models how to orally segment a word into the "target" sound plus everything else and then takes the sound away. A modified jingle can be used: "Chair. It starts with /ch/ and it ends with air; take the first sound away and it says air." The jingle can be used until the children can delete sounds with a simple prompt: "Say ball without the /b/".
• Children who have difficulty with deleting sounds might benefit from visual clues. By placing two colored blocks side-by-side, the teacher can designate one as representing the target sound and the other as representing the remainder of the word: "I'm going to use these blocks to say moon. This (red block) says moo and this yellow block says /n/. The child is then asked what the first block said when the second block is removed.

• What word starts with a different sound: bag, nine, beach, bike?
• Have three of four objects that start with the same sound. Have children identify the objects, so everyone uses the same labels and exaggerate the initial sounds. Sing/say the Sesame Street jingle, "One of these things just doesn't belong here, one of things is just not the same. Can you tell which thing just doesn't belong here? Before I finish this game?"

• Is there a /k/ in bike?

• Use songs in sound matching activities, e.g. Old Macdonald Had a Farm: What's the sound that starts these words? Turtle, time and teeth. (wait... for children's response) /t/ is the sound that starts these words: Turtle, time and teeth. With a /t/t/ here and a /t/t/ there, Here a /t/, there a /t/, everywhere a /t/t/.  /t/ is the sound that starts these words; turtle, time and teeth. The children might use favorite stories from their reading lessons to identify different sets of three words that start with the same sound to incorporate into the song. Each repeated verse could then emphasize a different sound.

• Make a set of dominoes that have two pictured objects on each card. The children are required to join cards sharing beginning (or ending) sounds.

• A version of "snap: uses cards having one picture. The children take turns drawing a card from a face-down pile and placing it on a face-up pile.  When a newly drawn card has the same beginning (or end) sound as the top card in the face-up pile, the first child to identify the match by saying "snap" collects the pile.

• Sound bingo uses bingo cards with pictures that the children mark if one of their pictures has the same beginning (or ending) sound as the word said by the caller.

• Pronounce a word and tell the children that this is the fast way to say the word, and give an example of the slow way. For example, football (fast way) and f-oo-t-b-a-ll (slow way). Give the children another word eg. bed and ask if they can say it the slow way (b-e-d).
• One idea is to display a picture of a train composed of an engine, passenger car, and a caboose. Three connecting boxes can be drawn under each component. Explain that words have beginning, middle, and end sounds just like the train has a beginning, middle and end. Demonstrate by slowly articulating a CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) word (e.g. /p/-/i/-/g/) and pointing to the box corresponding to the position of each sound in the word.
• Use interlocking blocks as a visual demonstration of segmentation.
• Children’s Names: Draw out the first sound and exaggerate so as to draw attention to the sound, e.g. C-C-C-Catherine, or Llllllllllllll-inda. Students may even begin to guess which child you are calling by the initial sound.
• Use Twinkle, Twinkle melody replacing with the following words: Listen, listen, to my word. Tell me all the sounds you heard: race. (slowly) /r/ is one sound, /a/ is two, /s/ is last in race, it’s true. (ask how many?)
• Concrete Objects: Elkonin boxes have been used in Reading Recovery to help low achieving readers focus on the sounds in words (Clay, 1985). A series of connected boxes are drawn across the page. The number of boxes corresponds to the number of sounds in a target word. The word chick is represented by three boxes. As the teacher slowly says the word, she/he models moving an object, such as a chip, into each box (l-r) as each sound is articulated. Ultimately, the moving of chips into the boxes is replaced by writing of letters in the boxes (chick: /ch/-/i/-/ck/).

Note: When working with the segmentation of entire words, it is best to use words of no more than three sounds (phonemes) as this is the most difficult task for young children.

General Phonological Manipulation:

• Language games that teach children to identify rhyming words and to create rhymes on  their own.

• Activities that help children understand that spoken sentences are made up of groups of separate words, that words are made up of syllables, and that words can be broken down  into separate sounds.

• "Word play" activities in which children change beginning, middle, or ending letters of related words, thus changing the words they decode and spell.

• Introduction of phonetically "irregular" words in practice activities and stories.