Letters and Sounds- A listening walk
We began our Letters and Sounds Program
this week by creating listening ears and going on a listening walk around the
school. We discovered the sounds we can hear in our environment and discussed
the importance of listening. We heard cars, the wind rustling the leaves,
people talking, leaves crunching underfoot, stomping, water trickling down the
water fountains and birds singing in the trees. We are learning to tune into
the sounds in our environment so that we can eventually hear the individual
sounds in words. This will help us learn to read and write. Why not try going
on a listening walk (or drive) on the way to school next week?
The Letters and Sounds Program is a
whole school program that has 6 phases. In Kindergarten we will primarily be
focussing on Phase 1 which gets the children to tune into sounds. Phase 1
comprises of 7 aspects.
Aspect 1 - General sound discrimination
- environmental
The aim of this aspect is to raise
children's awareness of the sounds around them and to develop their listening
skills. Activities suggested in the guidance include going on a listening walk,
drumming on different items outside and comparing the sounds, playing a sounds
lotto game and making shakers.
Aspect 2 - General sound discrimination - instrumental sounds
This aspect aims to develop children's
awareness of sounds made by various instruments and noise makers. Activities
include comparing and matching sound makers, playing instruments alongside a
story and making loud and quiet sounds.
Aspect 3 - General sound discrimination - body percussion
The aim of this aspect is to develop
children's awareness of sounds and rhythms. Activities include singing songs
and action rhymes, listening to music and developing a sounds vocabulary.
Aspect 4 - Rhythm and rhyme
This aspect aims to develop children's
appreciation and experiences of rhythm and rhyme in speech. Activities include
rhyming stories, rhyming bingo, clapping out the syllables in words and odd one
out.
Aspect 5 - Alliteration
The focus is on initial sounds of words,
with activities including I-Spy type games and matching objects which begin
with the same sound.
Aspect 6 - Voice sounds
The aim is to distinguish between
different vocal sounds and to begin oral blending and segmenting. Activities
include Metal Mike, where children feed pictures of objects into a toy robot's
mouth and the teacher sounds out the name of the object in a robot voice -
/c/-/u/-/p/ cup, with the children joining in.
Aspect 7 - Oral blending and segmenting
In this aspect, the main aim is to
develop oral blending and segmenting skills.
To practise oral blending, the teacher
could say some sounds, such as /c/-/u/-/p/ and see whether the children can
pick out a cup from a group of objects. For segmenting practise, the teacher
could hold up an object such as a sock and ask the children which sounds they
can hear in the word sock.
The activities introduced in Phase 1 are
intended to continue throughout the following phases, as lots of practice is
needed before children will become confident in their phonic knowledge and
skills.
Group 1
Group 2
