Why Students Need an Alphabet Sound Chart
An Alphabet Sound Chart and its accompanying introductory lesson plan can be downloaded at the end of this post.
Sometimes we forget how complex it is to learn the alphabet. You mastered it many years ago. As a teacher, your brain also gets constant review of the letters & their sounds, which reinforces your mastery.
The Classroom Wall Alphabet
There are several purposes for having an alphabet displayed on one of your classroom walls.
It is readily available for you and your students to reference at any time of the day.
It reminds students of the correct formation of uppercase and lowercase letters.
The images cue students to each letter’s sound.
What is an Alphabet Sound Chart?
It is a chart showing both the uppercase and lowercase form of the 26 letters of the alphabet. Each letter pair has an image whose name starts with the most common sound represented by the letter. In order to support young readers and writers, The Loving Literacy Alphabet Sound Chart includes images for both the short and long sounds of the vowels. The vowels are purposefully placed at the beginning. We want our students to become acutely aware of the vowels since every single word in English has at least one vowel. You’ll notice that the image for the letter “x” is a box. The reason for this is that the majority of words our young students will read and write that contain the letter “x” do not start with the letter. They usually end with the letter and represent the /ks/ sound. Finally, the four most common digraphs - th, ch, sh, and wh are included to support our young readers and writers.
Why do Students Need Their Own Copy of an Alphabet Sound Chart?
Imagine that you’re a student who is just learning the alphabet. Your teacher has asked you to write a sentence about your favourite food. You’re trying to spell the word spaghetti. Since you’re just learning to write, you’ll only record the letters that represent the sounds you hear in that word, therefore, spaghetti might be spelled spugete. If the only alphabet you have to refer to is on the classroom wall, these are the steps you’ll need to follow for each unknown letter-sound combination in the word.
Scan the classroom alphabet to determine which picture on the alphabet starts with the sound you need.
Decide whether to print the uppercase or lowercase form of the letter.
Remind yourself of how to form the chosen letter.
Look back down to locate where you were printing on the paper.
Form the letter correctly.
That’s a truly exhausting endeavour for our young writers’ brains! When students are writing, they need their own personal copy of a familiar alphabet sound chart right beside the paper they're writing on. That way, their eyes do not have to continually track up and down to spell unknown words.
Download the Loving Literacy Alphabet Sound Chart and accompanying introductory lesson.
