Advanced Sound Walls

11/10/22

Mary Dahlgren, Ed.D.

Oklahoma City, OK

Tools 4 Reading, Founder and President

National LETRS Trainer and Advisory Board Member

• The Reading League Oklahoma

Chapter, President

Advanced Sound Walls

Implementation of sound walls

Adding print

Analyzing errors in writing

High frequency words

§ the reading brain,

§ what is a sound wall,

§ how and why of the set up, and

§ how to use a sound wall to inform reading and writing.

Sound Walls –Making the Speech to Print

Connection in Your Classroom

§ Phonology

§ Orthography

The Reading Science and Necessary Elements to Become a Reader

Broca’s

Area

Angular

Gyrus

Phoneme - Grapheme

Association

Phonological

Processing

Visual Word Form

Area (Letter box)

This is critical for

automaticity!

Orthographic

Processing

Occipital

Lobe

that

the

this

1. Spoken word recognition, pronunciation, and

interpretation depend on accurately processing

phonemes.

2. Alphabetic writing systems like English represent

phonemes (as well as other aspects of language).

3. Proficient reading and spelling are strongly associated

with the ability to identify, remember, separate,

combine, and manipulate phonemes, and to do so

rapidly and without effort.

Why Focus on Phonemes?

Speech to Print - Louisa Moats

§ Phonological skills are essential for all levels of word reading

development

§ Assuming adequate effort and opportunity, the

phonological core deficit is the primary cause of word

reading difficulties. This is what differentiates a dyslexic

reader from a good reader.

§ Phonemic awareness skills are underrated (Kilpatrick, 2016)

§ Students are inadequately assessed beyond 1st grade

Implications for weak readers

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§ Phonemic Awareness Instruction: Contribution of

Articulatory Segmentation to Novice Beginners’

Reading and Spelling

§ Castiglioni-Spalten & Ehri, 2003

§ Contribution of Phonemic Segmentation Instruction

With Letters and Articulation Pictures to Word

Reading and Spelling in Beginners

§ Boyer & Ehri, 2011

§ Orthographic Mapping in the Acquisition of Sight

Word Reading, Spelling Memory, and Vocabulary

Learning

§ Ehri, 2014

Research to Support Sound Walls

We learn to read from speech to print!

§ We need an accurate depiction of speech to print.

§ Each element can be learned like multiplication tables or

periodic table of elements.

§ Our language is more understandable if we explain how

sounds are organized.

§ Sound walls establish a template for learning about the

language by anchoring to articulatory gestures.

Why Use a Sound Wall?

Getting their

ears ready for

what their

eyes are going

to see!

“There is reason to believe that sounds processed by the

ear are less central than articulatory gestures produced

by mouth movements in saying words. According to the

motor theory of speech perception (Liberman, 1999),

articulatory gestures rather than acoustic features

represent phonemes in the brain. Also, ease of

processing favors gestures. Whereas sounds are

ephemeral and disappear as soon as they are heard,

mouth positions are tangible and can be felt, viewed in

a mirror, and analyzed by learners.”

Ehri, 2015

1. Begin with sounds by teaching the articulation of phonemes.

§ If you currently use a word wall, you are going to have to make a few changes to include all

44 phonemes.

2. Build a sound wall as you teach the phonemes and add the

graphemes as they are introduced.

§ If you teach kindergarten, start with com m on consonants and contrasting vowels.

3. If you have already introduced graphemes, add the mouth pictures,

and review the articulation of each phoneme daily. The key is

repetition!

§ Discuss the sound each grapheme represents. Use mirrors and pictures to help make

connections and build memory traces.

Sound Walls: How To Begin

qu_

11/10/22

What is the Manner of Articulation?

1 – stop

2 – nasal

3 – fricative

4 – affricate

5 – glide

6 - liquid

Pop Quiz:

Language System

Sound Walls: How to Begin

4. Revisit words already posted on a word wall

and analyze them by initial sound.

§ Consider moving words if the phoneme match is inaccurate. For

example, move “the” to the voiced /th/

§ Discuss specific patterns (graphemes) that are used to represent our

phonemes and focus on the spellings (orthography) along with sounds

(phonemes).

5. Keep your alphabet strips in place above your

board or other area in your room. Do not be

confused by thinking only alphabetical order

here.

Keep your

alphabet charts

posted

Spanish

Phonology

Thanks to

Antonio Fierro!

Smile

High, fr ont

Open

Low, middle

Rounded

High, back

<i>

imán

idea

<e>

tres

elote

estrella

<a>

avión

arroz

<o>

oso

ojo

<u>

uvas

unicornio

Spanish Vowel Phonemes

Spanish Vowel Phonemes and <Graphemes>

/ŏ/= a /ĕ/= e /ē/= i /ō/= a /ŭ/= u

Slides page 10

11/10/22

EL Considerations - Vowels

Review as part of the daily warm up using various questioning

techniques. Describe the voicing, airflow, what the tongue, teeth,

lips are doing when producing a sound. Compare and contrast

sounds.

Daily Review in a Classroom

PreK Review – What’s My Sound

1. This sound is made with my tongue behind my teeth.

§ The air is coming through my nose when I make this sound.

§ What’s my sound?

§ Am I voiced or unvoiced?

2. This sound is made with my top teeth on my bottom lip.

§ There is friction in the air as it flows around my teeth and over my lip.

§ This sound is unvoiced.

§ What’s my sound?

§ 3. This sound is made with my mouth wide open. You can see my tonsils.

§ I’m a vowel sound, so my voice is on.

§ What’s my sound?

Warm Up - What’s My Sound?

Headbands – when students are ready to play

independently

11/10/22

Make Learning Fun – Match the Pictures with the Sounds

/ou/

Morphological Connections to be Considered

§ say /ā/ pay

§ says /ĕ/ pays

§ said /ĕ/ paid

§ do

§ does

§ done

§ go

§ goes

§ gone

§ be

§ been

ending blends

cats

dogs

jumped

hummed

in possible or

im possible?

in legal or

il legal?

Writing Sample Analysis

naglas = necklace

Stops

/k/ and /g/ confusion

c common issue for Spanish speakers

/k/ and /g/

11/10/22

Analyzing Writing Samples

Regular

• Follow conventions

• Common phoneme-

grapheme relations

Temporarily

Irregular

• Contain letter sound

relations not yet

taught

• Less common or

more advanced

spelling patterns

Permanently

Irregular

• May contain silent

letters

• Contain odd, peculiar

spellings

Three types of “sight words”

Read the

sentence

Read the word and

spell it saying letter

names.

11/10/22

Major Takeaway!

§ If the words follow reliable phonics patterns, posting time

on the Sound Wall should be brief.

§ Teach these words by using phoneme-grapheme

mapping.

§ Practice reading and spelling them and using them in a

sentence or phrase.

@tools4reading

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