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Discover the multiple benefits of implementing sound walls in your classroom, including improved phonemic awareness and streamlined reading instruction.

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Learn about the latest research on the effectiveness of sound walls in promoting literacy skills among young learners.

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You are welcome to print copies for non-commercial use, or a limited number for educational purposes, as long as credit is given to Reading Rockets and the author(s). For commercial use, please contact the author or publisher listed.

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Transitioning from Word Walls to Sound Walls

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Sound walls support students with learning those tricky high-frequency words. They also support students in retaining and learning to read unfamiliar words on their own. A sound wall does the work of matching our articulation of speech sounds/phonemes to the letters/graphemes that represent those sounds.

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Read about a fellow elementary school teacher’s experience and tips for making the switch to sound walls smoothly.

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Find downloadable templates, flashcards, and other resources to support the use of sound walls in your teaching.

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Watch video demonstrations of sound wall activities in action. Perfect for visual learners!

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How to Get Started with a Sound Wall in Your Classroom

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Let's Talk About the Classroom Sound Wall

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We've got all the answers to teachers' frequently asked questions about what a sound wall is, how to set one up, and how to use one in a classroom setting.

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Ep. 186: Top Tips for Using Sound Walls (Quick Tips from Our Teacher Friends)

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Fun ways to chant and make learning stick!

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Sound Wall Grapheme Song Chants - Whimsy Workshop Teaching

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Song chants to reinforce teaching graphemes from the sound wall. Perfect for interactive phoneme and grapheme daily practice.

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5 steps to support students with sound walls

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Sound walls guide students to investigate phonemes and make informed choices when they're unsure how to spell out a sound.

Dominic Trevett / Ikon Images

A colleague recently messaged us, "How and why should teachers use sound walls-and are they different from word walls?" We believe that both word walls and sound walls can be of value in the classroom, but there are distinct differences between the two.

Word walls, a print-to-speech tool, are organized by a word's initial letter. This can get tricky when you have a word like knot, which begins with the letter K and the sound N. That's where the sound wall comes into play, helping students spell words by listening to the phonemes, or the smallest unit of sound in speech in a word.

Sound walls are speech-to-print tools used to categorize phonemes. The word cat, for example, has three phonemes, c/a/t. In the English language, we identify about 44 phonemes using the 26 letters of the alphabet. In many ways, grasping the sounds of the 44 phonemes is like cracking a code for our early learners. Sound walls allow students to investigate sounds and eventually learn high-frequency words.

Some common materials for sound walls include mouth articulation cards, phoneme group labels, sound cards for phonemes, and sound spelling cards with power bar. For instance, the power bar is a visual cue to show how often the particular spelling of the sound is used. The sound /k/ has three different spelling patterns: "c," "k," and "ck." The power bar cards give clues to show students how often a certain spelling pattern is used in words. This way, students can make more informed spelling choices when they're unsure about how to spell out a sound.
Courtesy of TN Department of Education
Here, the "c" spelling has the largest bar, so this is the spelling most often used for the /k/ sound.

Organizing the Wall

Creating the sound wall before school begins can help teachers consider exactly where each new sound should be positioned. Arranging common sound patterns, mouth position cards, and power bar cards together creates organization.

When setting up the sound wall, arrange consonants on the left and the vowels on the right. The consonants are organized according to the type of sound/phoneme (stops, fricatives, affricates, glides, liquids, and nasals) and if the sound is voiced or unvoiced. The vowels are organized in a V shape called the vowel valley. The vowel valley on your classroom wall will show how the mouth looks and feels as each vowel sound is vocalized. At the top of the valley, the mouth is mostly closed, and slowly, as you descend in the valley, the mouth opens.
Courtesy of Danielle Rusk Carter
Once the sound wall is organized and affixed to your classroom wall, cover each sound with a piece of paper (in the image above, blue paper was used). When sounds that have not been taught are concealed, the wall is initially a mystery to students. Each day, review the sounds already introduced, and reveal a new sound by removing the blue paper. Finally, if appropriate, add the sound card. The sound card is an image and matching word serving as the example for the phoneme.

Depending on the grade, sound walls may look and progress differently. In kindergarten, for example, not all sound patterns are introduced, so the wall may not be completely uncovered at the end of the year.

In my (Danielle's) kindergarten classroom, the following five steps help me support my students:

1. Review: Reviewing all previously learned sounds and reciting a chant for each sound: /d/, /d/, /d/, /d/ as in dog (the word being the sound example for that pattern).

2. Practice: Practice the new sound for the day, focusing on mouth and tongue positions. We use small mirrors when possible to observe our mouths.

3. Notice: Notice if the chin drops to determine whether the sound is a consonant or a vowel. Ask students to place the top of their hand flat under their chin to feel the drop. Query students, "Did you feel your chin drop? Does the sound belong in our vowel valley?"

4. Explore: Explore the new sound. Practice singing the sound together. Can the sound be held out, or does it stop? Query students, "Can you hold the sound out like a musical note?"

5. Determine: Determine if the sound is voiced or unvoiced by feeling for vibrations in the throat. Ask students to place their entire hand lightly around their neck. Then, make the sound and feel for vibrations, and ask them, "Can you feel the vibration?"
Courtesy of Danielle Rusk Carter
Spicing Up the Sound Wall

If you're looking to add some color to your basic sound wall configuration, consider taking photos of your students' mouths making the stops, nasals, fricatives (and so on) and post their mouth images on classroom walls or on your classroom digital portfolio. Students can then use these images to make individual mini-books for future reference; and if they have access to iPads, the Book Creator app works nicely for this purpose. Teachers can even generate QR codes on each sound and capture video of student mouth positions with sound. Now students can use the QR code to verify sounds and mouth positions.

Highlight use of the sounds; continually refer to the wall throughout the day and not just during the literacy block.

When teachers notice that students have mastered a sound, it can be uplifting to let students teach their peers about the sounds they're familiar with-for example, saying "Wow, Oliver and Samhar both have the "oo" sound; if you need help, ask Oliver or Samhar."

Set up mirrors in front of the sound wall to get students to practice the sounds as part of their daily routine.

Add a lowered table or floor space under the sound wall where students can freely sit while writing. They can use the wall for referencing sound card words, self-checking spellings, and practicing sounding out to support independent writing.

To ensure that students retain the sounds they've learned, here are a few tips to incorporate sound wall learning into the existing school schedule:

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Using Sound Walls in Early Elementary Classrooms

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Sound walls guide students to investigate phonemes and make informed choices when they're unsure how to spell out a sound.

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You've seen word walls in classrooms for years, but is it time to add a sound wall to your classroom? Wait ... what is a sound wall? An easy way to organize all those different sounds (also known as phonemes) for students, sound walls are taking American schools by storm - and in some districts, they've replaced the word wall entirely.

But what is the purpose of a sound wall, and are they really better than word walls? Should you have both kinds in your classroom this school year or just choose one?

Our teacher team has put together a complete guide to sound walls to help you make the decision. Read on to find out what it is, whether it's better than a word wall and what the educational research says. Bonus: We also have some tips on how to set up a sound wall in your classroom!

What Is a Sound Wall?

First thing's first. We need to talk about what a sound wall actually is.

A sound wall is similar to a word wall, but instead of hanging up vocabulary words, this type of display in the classroom is comprised of the sounds/phonemes and letters/letter combinations that young learners will encounter as they develop their language skills.

The concept is based in the Science of Reading, and the goal is to help students make connections between the sounds their mouth makes and the letters that they read every day. It helps kids with word mapping and - of course - building their knowledge of letter-sound relationships so they can apply this knowledge to pronounce written words.

You can think of sound walls as speech-to-print tools, while word walls are print-to-speech tools.

A good sound wall will:

Be set up in two sections - vowels and consonants

Match sounds or phonemes with the letters (graphemes) that make them when spoken out loud

Include an articulatory photo or image reference, as well as a list of words that clearly displays the different graphemes for each phoneme

By using articulatory images, children are encouraged to think about the place of articulation - in other words, what's happening with their teeth, lips, and tongue when they are making a sound.

Are Sound Walls Research-Based?

You might be feeling a little hesitant to jump on a sound wall train when word walls have been around for decades and have plenty of teacher fans. Is there really any research out there to back all of this up?

Well, yes! The Science of Reading research plays heavily into the sound wall concept. When a National Reading Panel convened by Congress reviewed how reading is taught around the United States, they determined that explicitly teaching students phonemes was a critical component of effective literacy instruction and the development of reading fluency.

Sound walls were born out of this finding. They provide an understanding of the speech sounds the letters represent, so children can match the letters to the sounds and read unfamiliar words.

Take this printable sound wall, for example. It's made up of graphemes (and their corresponding phonemes) that your students are most likely to come across in the primary classroom, and it offers teachers the ability to add on as more graphemes are introduced.

Word Walls vs. Sound Walls

Of course, bringing up the topic of using sound walls has many teachers asking... but what about word walls? Should we drop them altogether?

Not necessarily. Let's dig a little bit deeper here!

Advantages of Sound Walls

Sound Walls Are Less Confusing for Younger Students - Because word walls are typically arranged in alphabetical order, it can create confusion for primary learners - after all, a word like "the" would be listed under the letter T in the alphabet, but young students may be confused as they're looking for /th/. And what about she, which falls under S, not /sh/?

Sound Walls Are Better for Students' Memory - Students with memory issues tend to struggle with word walls that force them to memorize a picture of the word. The human brain can only hold so many images, and eventually, it will "write over" those images, just like re-writing a memory card in your camera.

Advantages of Word Walls

The sound wall does a better job for younger students, but the word wall does still have its place! You may also want to have both a sound wall and a word wall in your classroom to serve different purposes.

Word Walls Help With Introducing New Vocabulary - Whether you're sharing weather words for a science class or introducing vocabulary around a particular holiday such as Presidents' Day, word walls come in handy for building older students' vocabularies.

Word Walls Can Be Interactive - Take this tip from Brittany Collins, an Indiana teacher and member of our resource production team: With older students, word walls can be a bit more content based and interactive. For example, if you are using a word wall for a particular science unit, students can use sticky notes to draw pictures to represent the word, provide examples of the term in the environment, write a definition for the word, etc."

Teacher idea: When introducing a sound, why not take a photo of one of your students' lips and use that for your display like teacher Stephanie Le Lievre did above?

How to Set Up a Sound Wall

Thinking it's time to build a sound wall in your classroom? You're going to want to start slow - just as words are typically added to a word wall one at a time, you'll want to add these little by little as you introduce them to your class.

Here are some suggested steps for how to introduce each of the phonemes on your sound wall.

1. Explicitly introduce each of the sounds as you usually would in your classroom.

2. Model the way you make the sound with your mouth.

3. Have each student use a mini mirror to see what their lips, teeth, and tongue are doing when they make the sound.

4. Discuss as a class what they notice when they are making that particular sound.

5. Display a word for each spelling pattern seen for this specific sound (if students are ready for this).

We have set up these easy printable sound wall cards so that you can create four different sections, one each for a:

consonants sound wall

short vowels sound wall

long vowels sound wall

other vowels sound wall

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Teachers Are Adopting Sound Walls Over Word Walls: Should You?

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What is a sound wall, and should you replace your classroom word wall with one of these walls instead?

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How To Set Up a Sound Wall in Your Classroom

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A step-by-step guide and plenty of tips.

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Tips for introducing a speech sound using a key word.

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Articulatory features of sounds and how to place sounds on sound wall

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Turn building your sound wall into an educational and collaborative practice!

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Turn building your sound wall into an educational and collaborative practice!

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Sound Walls and the Science of Reading

If you've ever used a word wall in your classroom, or have seen one in use, you may be aware that these displays of high-frequency words, arranged alphabetically, have long been used to help students identify patterns, expand vocabulary, reinforce spelling, and more. However, as an alternative to word walls, many literacy experts find the use of sound walls to be an effective tool for phonics instruction, which helps students visually see how letters and their associated sounds correspond.

Based in the science of reading, sound walls in the classroom help educators reinforce the importance of explicitly teaching the skills of letter-sound correspondence. The research behind the science of reading suggests that while learning to speak is, for most children, a very natural and intuitive process, the same is not true of reading. It simply doesn't come naturally and so must be taught in a systematic and explicit way.

Sound walls support key aspects of learning to read that are backed by the science of reading. These include phonemic awareness (the ability to isolate and manipulate the smallest units of sounds within spoken language) and phonics (the ability to make the connection between the sounds of spoken language and the printed letters and words on a page).

Sound walls are a logical, effective way to teach these skills in a way that works for students. Let's dive deeper to learn what sound walls are and how we can implement them in classrooms!

What Is a Sound Wall?

Sound walls help children isolate and identify the individual sounds that make up words and link how a word is spoken to how it is written and spelled.

In Sound Walls: Why Do We Need Them and How Do We Use Them?, the Mississippi Department of Education explains that "a sound wall supports students by focusing on the articulation of sounds/phonemes and the various letter or letter patterns that represent the sounds/phonemes in words." Sound walls and phonics fit naturally together, as a sound wall "supports explicit instruction of phonics" and "grouping words by their sounds is an effective strategy for teaching reading and spelling."

Sound walls group words by the 44 speech sounds, or phonemes, that make up the English language. A phoneme is the "smallest unit of speech distinguishing one word (or word element) from another, as the element p in "tap," which separates that word from "tab," "tag," and "tan." Similarly, sh is a phoneme in the word "shape" and ch is a phoneme in the word "chip." These subtle changes-affecting just one sound in these words-can dramatically change the word's meaning.

Phonemes can have different spelling variations, called graphemes. One example is the phoneme for the soft /c/ sound in "cell" and the /s/ sound in "sell"-they sound the same, but use different letters of the alphabet. "Blue" and "blew" also sound the same but have different meanings and spellings.

A young learner might hear the word "knee," and think it's spelled "nee." On a traditional word wall, that child might look in vain under "N" for the word "knee." When starting to read, the child might see the word "knee" in a story and experience confusion. Thinking the printed word ought to start with a /k/ sound, the student might miss the link between the word on the page and the spoken word.

Because a sound wall arranges words by sounds, not by the alphabet, they help students to properly associate spoken sounds with printed words-and to match phonemes with graphemes.

For example, a sound wall might include a section for the /k/ sound. That section would feature a "phoneme card" with a "/k/" printed on it. Under that card, the teacher could include a number of examples of how that sound is represented in printed words, each accompanied by a picture. For example:

This shows students that the "/k/" sound can have different spellings.

Sound walls also have a unique component, according to this resource from the Louisiana Department of Education, in that they also include images of students' mouths articulating the different phonemes. "Students can make the connection between what a phoneme sounds like and what their mouths should be doing when they are saying that phoneme. These images should be placed directly over the phoneme card on the sound wall."

Courtney Schoen, an educator in Las Vegas, Nevada, created a sound wall that she could share with more than 40 teachers in the district and got a student volunteer to model the mouth shapes in photographs. "I started utilizing it last year and saw so many lightbulbs go on for both the students and the teachers with whom I work," she says.

In addition to including illustrations or photos of students' mouths, you can also use mirrors in direct instruction with the students, as did April Atkins, a third-grade teacher from Alabaster, Alabama. During her second year of implementing a sound wall, she learned a great deal about students' needs for explicit instruction on air flow, teeth/tongue placement, lip position, and voiced versus unvoiced sounds:

As I assessed my students' spelling errors, I now knew why they mixed up "f" and "th" in their writing...at the speech level, they were not placing their teeth and tongue correctly! And now it made sense why "ch" and "sh" confused the students...they just didn't understand the air flow differences between those two sounds. It started to make much more sense to me. The sound wall gave me a deeper understanding. Now I was equipped with the strategies to help my students. I pulled out mirrors, and I worked with the students who needed guidance, holding up the mirrors as they spoke the sounds so they could see the shapes their mouths made. The progress was exciting. I had never been able to help kids in this way. They started to connect the phonemes and graphemes more easily and consistently.

Try it yourself! Say the word "cheese" out loud. Your mouth makes the shape of a slight smile, your teeth part, and your chin drops slightly. Now say the word "shut." Your mouth purses, and your chin pushes forward slightly. While /ch/ and /sh/ may seem to be very similar at first glance, illustrations or photographs that show what the mouth looks like as it is making these sounds can help solidify students' understanding of phonemes-leading to improvement in reading and writing skills.

Sound Wall vs. Word Wall

In what other ways do sound walls differ from word walls?

Word walls are arranged by the beginning letter of the words, displayed alphabetically from A-Z. Under the letter "A," a teacher might attach cards for words such as "are," "and," and "any." The idea is that students can easily see the word wall when refreshing their memory on how to spell a word, for example. Teachers have historically used word walls to cement knowledge of common sight words and to introduce new vocabulary.

Sound walls, on the other hand, are arranged by sounds rather than by printed letters. How does that make them more effective than word walls?

Sound walls are built on the premise that students need to be explicitly taught phonological and phonemic awareness. The ability to decode and identify sounds is a vital part of learning to become a fluent reader. So rather than starting from a focus on print, sound walls start by focusing on speech.

The ways in which the 26 letters of our alphabet can be grouped to make the 44 phonemes in the English language can be confusing for a beginning reader. Imagine a sentence such as, "Hey, the fish ate eight pieces of fake bait in one day." In just this one sample sentence, we can see that the long vowel sound of /ā/ is spelled in six different ways (h ey, ate, eight, f ake, b ait, d ay)! Sound walls can help students make sense of how sounds and speech translate to letter patterns.

April Atkins, the third-grade teacher from Alabama, says, "I initially put a sound wall up in my room three years ago after learning about the importance of learning to read from speech to print. Connecting the speech sounds, or phonemes, to the letters, or graphemes, is crucial for young children learning to read."

Sound Wall Examples

To build a sound wall, you may need a lot of dedicated space! One teacher to whom we spoke, Angela Premo, a first-grade teacher in Malone, New York, printed and laminated all the components of a comprehensive sound wall and quickly discovered it took up an entire wall of her classroom! However, she's committed to bringing more science of reading practices into her teaching, so the sound wall is there to stay.

But some teachers have found clever ways to display sound walls in smaller spaces. Courtney Schoen, the educator from Nevada, used a trifold poster board. There are even virtual versions of sound walls available online so that students can access them on their devices.
(Take a look at these sound wall examples from Courtney Schoen.)

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Science of Reading: Sound Walls in the Classroom

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Based in the science of reading, sound walls in the classroom help educators reinforce the importance of explicitly teaching the skills of letter-sound correspondence.

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If you are a kindergarten or early elementary teacher and have been considering using a sound wall in your classroom but are not sure if it will work or how and where to set it up, this post will offer some helpful suggestions and options as well as some useful resources.

What is a sound wall and why should I use one in my classroom?

A sound wall focuses on the sounds (phonemes) and the letters/letter patterns that represent those sounds in words.

The goal of a sound wall is to help students become proficient readers and spellers by helping them build solid phoneme-grapheme correspondence. The sound wall helps young students become aware of the speech sounds in our English language and that these sounds can be put together to create words. After all, print is speech in visual form.

Young students come to us able to say sounds through speech (talking). Sound walls help them connect those sounds to how they are represented in print. In other words, they go from speech to print.

Sounds walls include the 44 phonemes (speech sounds) of our language, rather than just the 26 letters of the alphabet. Learning the phonemes makes reading/spelling less confusing for students. For example, if a student's first name is "Chase" and it is placed under the alphabet letter "C" which he learns represents the /k/ sound as in "cat", he will be confused. Placing it under the digraph "ch" will make more sense since he will learn that the /ch/ sound in the beginning of his name is represented in print by the two letters "ch".

A sound wall is organized by place and manner of articulation (where in the mouth the sound is being produced and what is happening with airflow) rather than alphabetical. This helps students see what it takes in our brains and facial muscles to produce the sounds of our language.

Sound walls also create an awareness of articulation (how the sound is formed with the mouth) which helps young students better distinguish between sounds and letters/spellings.
Sound walls help students connect speech (what they already know) to print and build the phoneme-grapheme correspondence needed for decoding and reading words.
A sound wall is a very helpful teaching tool, but its success is very dependent on understanding why and how to use it with students. Therefore, I highly recommend attending professional development classes and/or doing some research on your own. Here are a few helpful resources to get you started. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but are a few favorites.

Helpful resources for learning more about sound walls:
Speech to Print book by Louisa Moats, Ed.D.
Mary Dahlgren: Retire Your Word Wall: How Sound Walls Support the Science of Reading (Podcast)
Mary Dahlgren: Sound Walls vs. Word Walls Transitioning from Word Walls to Sound Walls
How to Set Up Your Sound Wall

Spacing

The first thing to consider is where to place your sound wall. Spacing and location are important when deciding where to put your sound wall in the classroom. The vowels and consonants should have a divider in between them or be placed on separate bulletin boards or walls; therefore, you need 2 fairly large bulletin boards, walls, or spaces.

You also want your sound wall to be easily accessible to both you and your students, so it should not be too high up.

Most sound walls will fit on standard classroom bulletin boards of 7 feet x 4 feet. So if you have 2 free bulletin boards or a large wall space-great!

But what if you have a smaller space?

Option 1: Scale and print sound wall cards to fit your space. Measure your available space and measure the size of the sound wall cards you wish to use.

Figure out approximately how much space you would need for each (vowel valley and consonants) based on the configuration of a sound wall and the current size of the cards. Here is an example using my sound wall cards.

Divide your available space by the space needed at the current sound wall card size.

Scale the pages to that percentage prior to printing. For example, if your available space for the vowel valley is 42 inches wide, you would do 42 / 75 = .56. Therefore, you would print the cards at 56% or lower.

Option 2: Use a sound wall poster. Print a sound wall at poster size and hang it where it is accessible.

Option 3: Use a digital sound wall. Don't have the space for a sound wall in your classroom? Project an instructional digital sound wall onto your whiteboard or smartboard during instruction and when students are writing. Give students their own printable versions to use for reference when writing.

This is an example of a digital sound wall that is included in this resource.

Printable sound wall for students to keep at their desks for reference.

How to Arrange the Vowel Valley

The vowel valley is arranged according to the shape the mouth makes when speaking the sound and where in the mouth the sound is produced. If you watch your chin in a mirror as you say the sounds in the first slope (ē, ĭ, ā, ĕ, ă, ī, ŏ) it will drop and then go back up as you say the vowel sounds in the upward slope (ŭ, aw, ō, oo, ū, yū).

The diphthongs and r-controlled vowels are not part of the valley and should be placed underneath it or to the side of it. This is because your mouth position changes when making the diphthongs and the r changes the sound the vowel makes in r-controlled vowels.

Schwa - The schwa can be placed in the center of the vowel valley since any vowel can be a schwa. After teaching about the schwa sound, it is up to you whether to keep it on the sound wall or not. Since it is not helpful with spelling since any vowel can be a schwa, some teachers choose to remove it after the concept has been taught.

How to Arrange the Consonants

The consonants on a word wall are arranged according to place of articulation (where in the mouth the sound is being produced) and manner of articulation (what is happening with airflow when producing the sound). They are grouped into 7 categories:

Stops - quick puff of air then stops, air stops immediately. Have students place hand in front of mouth when saying the sound to feel the puff of air (p,b,t,d,k,g)

Nasals - air flows through the nose. Have students hold their nose and try to make the sound (they can't do it). (m,n,ng)

Fricatives - friction in the air flow (f,v,th,th,s,z,sh,zh,h)

Affricates - combination of fricative & stop, friction that is cut off, like a tug of war with sound (ch,j)

Glides - glide into next sound (wh, w, y)

Liquids - air moves around in our mouth like water overflowing (l, r)

Two Sounds - 2 sounds combine (qu, x)

How to Arrange the Sound Wall Cards

The arrangement of a sound wall is very important. It is arranged by sound and the cards should go from sound to print.

The mouth card should be first so students can see how the sound is made and when searching for a sound on the sound wall they can easily find it by matching how their mouth looks when making the sound.

The keyword picture card should be next. These pictures help remind students of the sound.

The spelling or word cards should be last and only put up or visible after you have taught the spelling. Personally, I use individual word cards with a picture that reminds students of the word and the targeted spelling highlighted in a different color. This shows young students that sounds make up words and where in the word the featured spelling or letter is found (beginning, middle, end).

I prefer to add the word spelling cards one at a time as they are taught so that the wall is not overwhelming for my students and we build the sound wall together.

Using Locks to Cover Sound Wall Cards

Presenting a sound wall with all of the cards visible at once can be overwhelming for young students. Therefore, lock cards can be placed over the cards and taken off as you teach each sound.

It builds excitement for the students (they can't wait to see what is under each one!) and makes it more interactive and meaningful for them since you are building (revealing) it together.

I like to build even more excitement by having 2 real keys on my desk that we use to "unlock" each sound. Students love it!

I hope this has been helpful in setting up your sound wall. If you are interested in using the sound wall from this post, click the link below. To find helpful tips for how to use your sound wall click here.

Resources used in this post:
Sound Wall with Real Mouth Pictures & Photos + Digital
Pin it for later!

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How to Set Up a Sound Wall in Kindergarten, Early Elementary - Lessons for Little Ones by Tina O'Block

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If you are a kindergarten or early elementary teacher and have been considering using a sound wall in your classroom but are not sure if it will work or how and where to set it up, this post will offer some helpful suggestions and options as well as some useful resources.

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Kindergarten -Why is a sound wall better than a word wall?

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Kindergarten -Why is a sound wall better than a word wall?

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Teaching Exceptional Kinders by Amy Murray

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Why is a Sound Wall better than a Word Wall?

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Teaching Exceptional Kinders by Amy Murray

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See What's Included inside Successful Sound Walls

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Simple explanation to compare sound wall to a word wall (Kinders)

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Simple explanation to compare sound wall to a word wall (Kinders)

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Teaching Exceptional Kinders by Amy Murray

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Simple Explanation to Compare a Sound Wall to a Word Wall

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Instructional moves for Vowel sound review

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Instructional moves for Vowel sound review

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Sound Wall Instructional Moves for Vowel Sound Review

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Exploring a sound wall - Dr. Kindergarten

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Exploring a sound wall - Dr. Kindergarten

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Gaab Lab Next Steps in Reading Instruction

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Sound Wall Introduction: Consonant Sounds

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Gaab Lab Next Steps in Reading Instruction

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Gaab Lab Next Steps in Reading Instruction

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How to Get Started with a Sound Wall in Your Classroom

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Interesting common mistakes teachers should avoid in a phonics lesson

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Interesting common mistakes teachers should avoid in a phonics lesson

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Wiley Blevins, Ed.M. – The common mistakes teachers should avoid in a phonics lesson

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Wiley Blevins Grades 3_5 Phonics Survival Guide

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benefits of a sound wall - Free SOR Guide

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benefits of a sound wall - Free SOR Guide

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It's time to ditch word walls for sound walls. Sound walls are based on the science of reading, and are an excellent way to explicitly teach phonemes. They are highly effective, especially for struggling readers, and make a lot more sense than word walls. Sound walls can be used in primary grades and with older students. The sounds you display may differ at times with different groups, but a sound wall is helpful for all ages.

SCIENCE OF READING QUICK START GUIDE

What is a sound wall?

A sound wall is a place where the different speech sounds (phonemes) are displayed. Instead of the traditional word wall, where words are displayed on a wall organized by their first letter, you display the different speech sounds using phoneme cards and organize words based on their sounds.

The phonemes are often displayed in specific groups, but they don't have to be. There is a consonant sound wall and a vowel sound wall, sometimes called a 'vowel valley'. Often, a list of the different spellings for each sound is included under or next to the phoneme cards, and sometimes a word list is also included. Good sound walls also include mouth formation visuals so students can see what their lips, teeth, and tongue should be doing to make that sound.

Benefits of a sound wall

Again, I refer back to the science of reading. Students need to master phonemic awareness to become fluent readers. Matching speech to print is critical and a sound wall is one of the best ways to support this.

Benefits of a sound wall include:

explicit instruction of phonemes

builds orthographic mapping

provides consistent review of sounds

provides a visual reference for students in the classroom

improves spelling

improves decoding

Why a sound wall is better than a word wall?

Grouping words by their sounds instead of letters is more effective at teaching reading and spelling. Students learn that one sound can be made using different graphemes, and it helps to teach spelling patterns. In 2000, The National Reading Panel found that explicitly teaching phonemes was a critical component of effective reading and spelling instruction.

Louisa Moats, the author of Speech To Print (which I highly recommend all reading teachers get a copy of), states that "without awareness of the speech sounds that letters represent, one cannot match letters to sounds and read unfamiliar words."

How to introduce a sound wall

Sound walls can be introduced at any time, and the sooner the better! You introduce a sound wall using the sounds your students already know, even if it's just a few.

How to set up the phoneme sound wall cards

Put up the phoneme cards for the sounds they know, and list the different spelling patterns for that sound by the card. With your students, add familiar words using those spelling patterns for that sound under the card.

There are voiced and unvoiced consonant sounds, and then you also have vowel sounds. Voiced sounds are the sounds made from the voice box. unvoices sounds do not vibrate the vocal cords. Say the /s/ (unvoiced) and /z/ (voiced) sounds and you will notice the difference.

Consonant Sounds

Stops - puff of air comes our of your mouth when making these sounds

Unvoiced: /p/, /t/, k/

Voiced: /b/, /d/, /g/

Nasals - you feel these vibrate inside your nose

/m/, /n/, /ng/

It's recommended to keep nasal sounds out when segmenting words because of how it changes the vowel sound, making it a more nasal sound.

Fricatives - lots of vibration and 'skinny air'

Unvoiced: /f/, /th/ ( thumb), /s/, /sh/, /h/

Affricates - in between a fricative and stop

Unvoiced: /ch/

Voiced: /j/

Glides - very airy

Unvoiced: /wh/ (more common in British English)

Voiced: /w/, /y/

Liquids - feel like they fill your mouth up

/l/, /r/

These attach to vowels and alter them, so try not to use them when segmenting.

Vowel Sounds

There are 19 vowel sounds, and they are usually represented in a V shape to mimic the motion of your chin as you make these sounds.

This is better represented in an image so reference the Vowel Valley charts above and below to see the sounds.

How to use a sound wall in the classroom

Once you have set up your sound wall, you can introduce new sounds explicitly.

1. Introduce one sound at a time.

The specific order doesn't really matter, but you can use this as a guide. The key is not to introduce multiple sounds at once.

5 questions to ask when introducing a new sound

There are a few questions you want to ask about sounds when teaching them to your students:

1. What are my lips doing?

2. What are my teeth doing?

3. What is my tongue doing?

4. What is my voice doing?

5. How is the air flowing?

When students are making a sound, go through these 5 questions. Model these for your students to they can try to mimic you. Some phoneme card sets include the visuals of the mouth to help with this.

I give my students a small mirror so they can see what their lips, teeth, and tongue are doing. This is really helpful for them to notice the slight differences in the phonemes, especially when working on vowel sounds.

Don't add a schwa sound!

It's very important to correctly model the sounds. One mistake many people often make is adding the schwa (the /uh/ sound) after a consonant. For example, T makes the sound /t/ but sometimes people add an /uh/ and say /tuh/. It's very important we're not adding that /uh/ sound when teaching phonemes.

2. Don't introduce similar sounds in sequence.

Because some sounds are very similar, it can be confusing for students to learn them in sequence. This is often the case with short e and short i. Although the overall sequence for teaching all the phonemes doesn't really matter, this is the one thing you want to keep in mind when planning out the sequence you'll be teaching.

3. Display only the sounds you have taught.

As you introduce new sounds, you add those to your sound wall. Don't put up a full sound wall with all the sounds at the beginning of the school year!

4. Add words with the different spellings of that sound - but only the spelling patterns students have learned.

As you introduce new sounds and spelling patterns, add words next to or below the phoneme card. This helps students remember that different spelling patterns make the same sound.

5. Use the sound wall for quick daily review.

Every day, take a few minutes to quickly go through the sounds on the sound wall before introducing any new sounds, if doing so.

6. Show students how they can use the sound wall as a reference for reading and writing.

Model for students how they can use the sound wall to help them decode and spell words. You can also provide them with a mini sound wall that they can have in their desk or notebook.

Tip: If you want to see a great free presentation on sound walls, I suggest Michelle Trostle's Sound Walls 101. She explains each step of the sound wall, the sound types, and makes it all come together for anyone new to sound walls.

Where to find sound walls?

You can certainly make your own by printing out phoneme cards and laminating them. You'll need to add example words for each sound as well, so flashcards with a picture of the word are best for this.

If you prefer a ready-made set, Tools 4 Reading is an excellent option, but pricey. I also created my own sound wall and mini sound walls (pictured below), which you will need to print, laminate, and cut. This is much cheaper than the Tools 4 Reading set.
Shop my sound wall resources here.
Here are how some of my sound walls are being used in classrooms:

Special education teacher Mikayla Jorgenson's wound wall:

SCIENCE OF READING QUICK START GUIDE

Want to remember this? Save Why You Should Switch To A Sound Wall to your favorite Pinterest board!

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It's time to ditch word walls for sound walls. Sound walls are based on the science of reading, and are an excellent way to explicitly teach the phonemes.

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HMH - Make it collaborative and build it with students!

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Sound Walls and the Science of Reading

If you've ever used a word wall in your classroom, or have seen one in use, you may be aware that these displays of high-frequency words, arranged alphabetically, have long been used to help students identify patterns, expand vocabulary, reinforce spelling, and more. However, as an alternative to word walls, many literacy experts find the use of sound walls to be an effective tool for phonics instruction, which helps students visually see how letters and their associated sounds correspond.

Based in the science of reading, sound walls in the classroom help educators reinforce the importance of explicitly teaching the skills of letter-sound correspondence. The research behind the science of reading suggests that while learning to speak is, for most children, a very natural and intuitive process, the same is not true of reading. It simply doesn't come naturally and so must be taught in a systematic and explicit way.

Sound walls support key aspects of learning to read that are backed by the science of reading. These include phonemic awareness (the ability to isolate and manipulate the smallest units of sounds within spoken language) and phonics (the ability to make the connection between the sounds of spoken language and the printed letters and words on a page).

Sound walls are a logical, effective way to teach these skills in a way that works for students. Let's dive deeper to learn what sound walls are and how we can implement them in classrooms!

What Is a Sound Wall?

Sound walls help children isolate and identify the individual sounds that make up words and link how a word is spoken to how it is written and spelled.

In Sound Walls: Why Do We Need Them and How Do We Use Them?, the Mississippi Department of Education explains that "a sound wall supports students by focusing on the articulation of sounds/phonemes and the various letter or letter patterns that represent the sounds/phonemes in words." Sound walls and phonics fit naturally together, as a sound wall "supports explicit instruction of phonics" and "grouping words by their sounds is an effective strategy for teaching reading and spelling."

Sound walls group words by the 44 speech sounds, or phonemes, that make up the English language. A phoneme is the "smallest unit of speech distinguishing one word (or word element) from another, as the element p in "tap," which separates that word from "tab," "tag," and "tan." Similarly, sh is a phoneme in the word "shape" and ch is a phoneme in the word "chip." These subtle changes-affecting just one sound in these words-can dramatically change the word's meaning.

Phonemes can have different spelling variations, called graphemes. One example is the phoneme for the soft /c/ sound in "cell" and the /s/ sound in "sell"-they sound the same, but use different letters of the alphabet. "Blue" and "blew" also sound the same but have different meanings and spellings.

A young learner might hear the word "knee," and think it's spelled "nee." On a traditional word wall, that child might look in vain under "N" for the word "knee." When starting to read, the child might see the word "knee" in a story and experience confusion. Thinking the printed word ought to start with a /k/ sound, the student might miss the link between the word on the page and the spoken word.

Because a sound wall arranges words by sounds, not by the alphabet, they help students to properly associate spoken sounds with printed words-and to match phonemes with graphemes.

For example, a sound wall might include a section for the /k/ sound. That section would feature a "phoneme card" with a "/k/" printed on it. Under that card, the teacher could include a number of examples of how that sound is represented in printed words, each accompanied by a picture. For example:

This shows students that the "/k/" sound can have different spellings.

Sound walls also have a unique component, according to this resource from the Louisiana Department of Education, in that they also include images of students' mouths articulating the different phonemes. "Students can make the connection between what a phoneme sounds like and what their mouths should be doing when they are saying that phoneme. These images should be placed directly over the phoneme card on the sound wall."

Courtney Schoen, an educator in Las Vegas, Nevada, created a sound wall that she could share with more than 40 teachers in the district and got a student volunteer to model the mouth shapes in photographs. "I started utilizing it last year and saw so many lightbulbs go on for both the students and the teachers with whom I work," she says.

In addition to including illustrations or photos of students' mouths, you can also use mirrors in direct instruction with the students, as did April Atkins, a third-grade teacher from Alabaster, Alabama. During her second year of implementing a sound wall, she learned a great deal about students' needs for explicit instruction on air flow, teeth/tongue placement, lip position, and voiced versus unvoiced sounds:

As I assessed my students' spelling errors, I now knew why they mixed up "f" and "th" in their writing...at the speech level, they were not placing their teeth and tongue correctly! And now it made sense why "ch" and "sh" confused the students...they just didn't understand the air flow differences between those two sounds. It started to make much more sense to me. The sound wall gave me a deeper understanding. Now I was equipped with the strategies to help my students. I pulled out mirrors, and I worked with the students who needed guidance, holding up the mirrors as they spoke the sounds so they could see the shapes their mouths made. The progress was exciting. I had never been able to help kids in this way. They started to connect the phonemes and graphemes more easily and consistently.

Try it yourself! Say the word "cheese" out loud. Your mouth makes the shape of a slight smile, your teeth part, and your chin drops slightly. Now say the word "shut." Your mouth purses, and your chin pushes forward slightly. While /ch/ and /sh/ may seem to be very similar at first glance, illustrations or photographs that show what the mouth looks like as it is making these sounds can help solidify students' understanding of phonemes-leading to improvement in reading and writing skills.

Sound Wall vs. Word Wall

In what other ways do sound walls differ from word walls?

Word walls are arranged by the beginning letter of the words, displayed alphabetically from A-Z. Under the letter "A," a teacher might attach cards for words such as "are," "and," and "any." The idea is that students can easily see the word wall when refreshing their memory on how to spell a word, for example. Teachers have historically used word walls to cement knowledge of common sight words and to introduce new vocabulary.

Sound walls, on the other hand, are arranged by sounds rather than by printed letters. How does that make them more effective than word walls?

Sound walls are built on the premise that students need to be explicitly taught phonological and phonemic awareness. The ability to decode and identify sounds is a vital part of learning to become a fluent reader. So rather than starting from a focus on print, sound walls start by focusing on speech.

The ways in which the 26 letters of our alphabet can be grouped to make the 44 phonemes in the English language can be confusing for a beginning reader. Imagine a sentence such as, "Hey, the fish ate eight pieces of fake bait in one day." In just this one sample sentence, we can see that the long vowel sound of /ā/ is spelled in six different ways (h ey, ate, eight, f ake, b ait, d ay)! Sound walls can help students make sense of how sounds and speech translate to letter patterns.

April Atkins, the third-grade teacher from Alabama, says, "I initially put a sound wall up in my room three years ago after learning about the importance of learning to read from speech to print. Connecting the speech sounds, or phonemes, to the letters, or graphemes, is crucial for young children learning to read."

Sound Wall Examples

To build a sound wall, you may need a lot of dedicated space! One teacher to whom we spoke, Angela Premo, a first-grade teacher in Malone, New York, printed and laminated all the components of a comprehensive sound wall and quickly discovered it took up an entire wall of her classroom! However, she's committed to bringing more science of reading practices into her teaching, so the sound wall is there to stay.

But some teachers have found clever ways to display sound walls in smaller spaces. Courtney Schoen, the educator from Nevada, used a trifold poster board. There are even virtual versions of sound walls available online so that students can access them on their devices.
(Take a look at these sound wall examples from Courtney Schoen.)

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Science of Reading: Sound Walls in the Classroom

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Based in the science of reading, sound walls in the classroom help educators reinforce the importance of explicitly teaching the skills of letter-sound correspondence.

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What is a Sound Wall and How Can It Be Used in a Kindergarten Classroom? - Teaching Exceptional Kinders

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Here you'll learn the answer to "what is a sound wall?" is and "why you should I use sound walls in my kindergarten classroom?". Maybe you've heard about a sound wall from your literacy specialist or while browsing a Facebook page. And you've seen other teachers making the switch from a traditional word wall to [...]

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How to use a sound wall when you are short on space

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How to use a sound wall when you are short on space

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How To Create a Space-saving Sound Wall When You Are Short On Space

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You've read about sound walls and you're ready to get started but where will you find the space? Using a sound wall instead of a word wall can take up almost double the space of a traditional word wall. Most teachers are already short on wall space or maybe you're a resource teacher with a ...

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Above is a lesson created to introduce sound walls to a 2nd grade class.

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Watch how the mirror is used by the students!

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Sound Wall Lesson Example - Reading Horizons Discovery Sound City™

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An activity pack with ideas using sound wall!

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qu activity pack | qu digraph printables | sound wall activity | TPT

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This might be helpful to explain the phonemes on the sound wall if you are interested.

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How to Teach Phonemes with a Sound Wall - Teaching Exceptional Kinders

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Learn more about using a sound wall to teach phonemes and grab free a cheat sheet to keep yourself organized.