Sound walls are versatile instructional tools that can be used in a variety of settings and in a variety of ways. At the core of each of these uses, is the focus of instruction from speech to print. Read more about getting started with a sound wall. This will give you the why and what of sound walls. The following explains how sound walls can work at various levels. Much of this knowledge comes from a combination of researching, reading, and listening to literacy experts on the topics of phonology, phonics, and sound walls. Recommended resources are listed at the end of the post. These are my personal recommendations based on personal experience using sound walls with various grade levels in the classroom and in a tutoring setting. Photographs have been graciously shared by others in the field. phoneme – sound grapheme – spelling Sound Walls in Small Group Environments (Intervention, Tier 3, Tutoring) If a teacher sees multiple grades, groups, individuals per day, it may be hard to have a traditional sound wall placed on the wall. Different students are at different stages in learning the phonemes and their corresponding graphemes. It would be just crazy to have one Continue Reading
Why use a sound wall? Babies are born and quickly learn the sounds of their native languages. They are sponges, soaking up the language, recognizing similar sounds, building connections between sounds and words, and eventually speaking. Our brains are wired for spoken language. This is not new. Humans have been speaking since they first existed. Contrary to popular belief, our brains are not wired to read. There is no part of the brain that has the sole function of reading text. There is, however, a part of the brain that has the sole function of producing speech. When children or adults learn to read, they are quite literally rewiring the brain. Humans utilize many parts of the brain when learning to read. The connections between these parts (orthographic processor, phonological processor, meaning processor, and visual processor) have to be created, strengthened, and repeatedly used to achieve automaticity. We can facilitate a learner’s early reading and writing journey by approaching the code from their point of view (speech) and leading them toward our point of view as a fluent reader (print). Sound walls help by building upon what students already know (spoken language) when they are acquiring new knowledge. What is Continue Reading