For example, when shown an image of a dog, students sound out the /d/ sound. The teacher can then select another image, such as a fox, and have students sound out the /f/ sound. A similar activity is called I See and Shout. Students select objects around the room that start with a specific letter sound and shout it out. Students who struggle with letter sounds can use magnetic letters and tap to the sounds as they are called out. The more students practice isolating letter sounds, the better prepared they will be to blend them.

   For example, the teacher sounds out /b//u//g/ as "bbuugg," and students match it to the correct word card (Reading Rockets. Another activity is for families to visit a local playground, give the child a word to blend as they go down a slide, and then have the child say the whole word once they reach the bottom. This sequence helps make blending and phonemic awareness practice fun. Afterwards, this activity can be extended to practicing segmentation skills.

   Other activities include singing songs or chants and breaking words into syllables or sounds. For example, students can segment a word like /m//o//o//n/ by chanting, then clapping twice between each sound, saying the whole word, and clapping again. This repetitive activity keeps students engaged. Another activity involves giving students small words to write on a whiteboard, then breaking them apart into individual sounds and tapping each sound to show letter-sound efficiency. For students who struggle with writing, have them use a tablet to type the segments, then sound them out. Once students learn to segment, they can build skills for phoneme manipulation.

   One example is a manipulation worksheet like the one above, which students complete as a fill-in-the-blank or missing-letter activity. Another activity is the game Hungry Alligator, in which the teacher places a word on the board and, with the class, pretends that a paper alligator has eaten one of the letter sounds (Jump, 2025). The students then read the leftover word, create another word by manipulating it, and say it out loud. Additionally, students can practice at home by creating 10 new words every day with their parents, using substitution, addition, or deletion of phonemes. Once students master phoneme manipulation, they can further practice rhyming and expand their vocabulary.

   At home, parents can play rhyming games, and children can listen to audiobooks and identify rhyming words. Mastery occurs when students can recognize when word endings sound or are spelled alike. Developing this skill helps students gain confidence in their reading abilities.

-Isolation

-Blending

-Segmentation

-Manipulation: includes deletion, substitution, and addition of phonemes

-Rhyming

Students who have mastered these skills should be ready for :

• Learning to read and listen to small, short stories with peers with illustrations

• word recognition and spelling

• basic fluency and vocabulary comprehension

  
  

  
  

  
  

Jump, D. (2025, January 29). Phoneme Manipulation Activities for Small Groups. Mrs. Jump’s Class. https://deannajump.com/phoneme-manipulation-activities/

Instructional Routines | Florida Center for Reading Research. (n.d.). Fcrr.org. https://fcrr.org/reading-success/instructional-routines

 Reading Rockets. (2023). Blending and segmenting games. Reading Rockets. https://www.readingrockets.org/classroom/classroom-strategies/blending-and-segmenting-games

Rhyme (2024). The Poetry Foundation. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/education/glossary/rhyme