It shouldn’t be this hard, should it? Every year I wonder if I am working with aliens when I begin to assess sound placement in words, lol. Most get the beginning sounds, but usually over half look at me with a blank stare when I ask what the middle sound is. I think much of it is appropriateness for kinders. They are still sorting out where letters belong. Being a discriminating listener and sound “identifier” takes a lot of practice! This week, I devised a centers set that I hope will address the concept of sound placement, especially that elusive middle vowel sound. Students are to match the sound picture to the sound that begins its name, is in the middle of its name, or ends its name. Obviously, it would be good to feature the three separately at first, then later on put them together to make it more challenging. What do you do to practice sound placement? What listening games do you use?
Our district uses the Michael Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Exercises. We begin the year with the pre-k manual which takes only about five minutes of your day, and when repeated each day it can help with rhyme, initial, middle, and final sounds, syllables, and more. The kinder manual is pretty difficult for the beginning of the year, but is very helpful toward the end (March-June). Here is a link to a sample page:
The complete pre-k and k set is a little over $100, but is totally worth the cost.
If you find yourself in need of centers for beginning-middle-ending sounds, you may be interested in this set with a spring theme:
I inserted a unique “3 dot” code to help little people know which sets are for beginning, middle or ending sounds. The recording sheets tie in letter to sound recognition with writing practice of the letter sounds. I am anxious to implement this next week! Happy Spring!
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