Glossary · Sounds and phonemic awareness
What is a sound wall?
Definition
A sound wall is a classroom display organized by speech sounds, with the spellings for each sound listed under it, instead of a word wall organized by letter.
Consonants are usually grouped by how and where they're made: stops together, nasals together, and so on. Vowels are often shown as a valley or slide that follows the mouth from a wide smile to rounded lips.
The point is to start from the sound. A student who wants to spell a word with /k/ goes to the /k/ card and finds c, k, ck and ch as possible spellings, with an example word for each.
Mouth pictures, photos of lips and tongue position, go with each sound. They give students something to compare against when they're unsure of a sound.
In a lesson
A student writing about a picnic gets stuck on the /k/ at the end of pic. They go to the /k/ card, see c, k and ck, and pick c because it ends a syllable after a short vowel.
Examples
Each word with its spelling units, one per sound.
- chorusch·or·u·s
- clinicc·l·i·n·i·c
- kitek·i_e·t
- stacks·t·a·ck
Words come from our lexicon, checked against a pronouncing dictionary. Words a student sees in our assessments are left out.
Why does this matter for the record?
If you use a sound wall, note when a student starts using it unprompted. That is real independence and worth a line in the record.
Rate each skill as you teach it
Needs support, Developing, Secure. The rating schedules the review and builds the report.