A Teacher Strategy –Working With Phonemes

It’s now widely accepted that proper phonics instruction is crucial to reading.  Here is a fun activity that involves manipulating phonemes.

Review with students that all words are composed of letters and these letters make individual sounds (phonemes.)  Explain to students they will be playing a listening game and the goal is to change a word by taking out or adding different phonemes to parts of the word.

Call out a word. For example, take.

1. Ask students to remove one sound (the k sound, for example) and add another sound (like the l sound) to what’s left over creating the word tail.
2. Say the new word tail together and ask students to remove and add another phoneme sound (change the t to j and create the word jail.)
3. Continue playing until all the letter sounds have been replaced.

This game allows children to “hear it for themselves” and recognize that changing letters in the word not only creates a brand new word but creates a brand new meaning as well.  The word take not only looks different than the word jail, the two have entirely different meanings.  Just another way to reinforce the core principle of the written language – that letters have sounds, that sounds make words, and that words make meaning.