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Sound Walls

Sound Walls throughout the School

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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 large one and then have to cover and uncover certain cards each time a group changed! Here are a few recommendations:

  • Individual file folder sound walls – Each child or each group keeps a file folder size sound wall. You may choose to cover sounds that have not been taught. It may be easier to simply highlight the sounds as they have been taught. If individual sound walls are laminated for students, teachers can use a black permanent marker to draw lines over the graphemes that have not been taught. Then, when it is time to learn that grapheme, use a black expo marker on top of the black permanent marker. The permanent marker will disappear!
  • Individual sound wall to track auditory drill – Print a copy back to back. Use as a progress monitoring tool during your auditory drill. Date under each phoneme as students respond. Track mastery and difficulty. An auditory drill is when the teacher says the sound, and the students write all the possible graphemes that they have learned to represent that sound.
tracking student knowledge of graphemes during an auditory drill
  • Tri-fold Board Sound Walls – These boards work well when teachers see certain groups of students who are around the same ability level. This also works well in homes for families who want to integrate sound walls, but do not want to place it on the wall. Use tri-fold boards (the free standing poster boards used for science experiments) to display the sound wall. I suggest you put the vowel valley on one board and the consonant wall on another. Specialists and interventionists may choose to create multiple different sound wall boards for each grade level. When a group enters, just pull out the specific boards needed for the specific group. These are also light enough to move from classroom to classroom.
Photo curtesy of Sara, homeschool parent of 3 elementary age children

Sound Walls to Assist English Language Learners (ELLs)

Sound walls will assist ELLs of all ages in a positive way. The organization and visuals provided will give students a concrete example of fleeting speech sounds. You are giving learners the knowledge of how to produce the sound with the mouth first. Then, it will be easier for them to anchor the sound to the mouth movement, and then the letter or letters to the sound. Focusing on articulation is especially helpful when students are not familiar with the speech sounds in a new language. Often times, ELLs will discover that phonemes overlap, but spelling changes (ex: Spanish and English have the sound /E/, however it is spelled differently in each language). Sound walls are a great help for students when they are having to decipher between the sounds and graphemes in two or more languages. Sound walls can also be helpful in middle and high school classrooms with a high English learner population. When a teacher shows learners that there is an organization and reason for different sounds and spellings, students will have greater buy-in and understanding. Sound walls can help expedite this process.

Here are some practice ideas at various grade levels PreK-5. Many ideas will overlap, but there are also slight differences throughout. These are not sound wall rules. These are ideas to help you begin to imagine using a sound wall with students in your specific classroom.

Ideas for PreK
Display pictures of kids’ faces showing the correct placement of the lips, tongue, and teeth.
Spend a considerable amount of time discussing how and where the sounds are made.
Add sound wall review to typical morning meeting or calendar time.
Use mirrors to allow students to see their own mouth placement.
Draw attention to voiced and unvoiced sounds.
Choose sound wall cards with accurate key word pictures as the focus.
Cover all graphemes.
Flip over or do not post phoneme cards if the sound has not been taught yet.

Heavy focus on articulation picture and key word pictures, limited graphemes shown

Ideas for K
Display pictures of kids’ faces showing the correct placement of the lips, tongue, and teeth.
Spend a considerable amount of time discussing how and where the sounds are made.
Add a quick sound wall review to typical morning meeting or calendar time.
Use mirrors to allow students to see their own mouth placement.
Draw attention to voiced and unvoiced sounds.
Choose sound wall cards with accurate key word pictures.
Flip over or do not post phoneme cards if the sound has not been taught.
Follow your curriculum scope and sequence as you introduce sounds.
Reveal cards as you explicitly teach the sounds.
Cover graphemes that have not been taught yet.
Reveal graphemes as you explicitly teach each one individually.

Photo courtesy of Tiffany, Interventionist serving K and 2nd
(Sticky notes covering untaught graphemes)
Photo courtesy of Amy, Kindergarten Classroom
(Sticky notes covering untaught graphemes)

Ideas for Grades 1-2
Display pictures of kids’ faces showing the correct placement of the lips, tongue, and teeth.
Spend time discussing how and where the sounds are made, especially new sounds.
Add a quick sound wall review to typical morning meeting or calendar time.
Use mirrors to allow students to see their own mouth placement.
Choose sound wall cards with accurate key word pictures.
Flip over or do not post phoneme cards if the sound has not been taught.
Follow your curriculum scope and sequence as you introduce sounds.
Reveal cards as you explicitly teach the sounds.
Cover graphemes that have not been taught yet.
Reveal graphemes as you explicitly teach each one individually.

First and Second Grade Homeschool Classroom
(white paper covering untaught graphemes)

A large focus of first and second grade is spelling instruction. Activities like phoneme-grapheme mapping will help students to take individual graphemes into permanently stored specifically ordered strings of graphemes. It is vital that teachers follow a scope and sequence for reading and spelling instruction. A sound wall can greatly assist students while spelling. Sound walls also help to teach the teacher the reasons why students are making the errors that they are.

The nature of a sound wall is to focus student attention from speech to print. This means that students can look to the sound wall to help them spell the sounds that they hear when they say and segment words. Once a word has been orally segmented into its individual phonemes, students can reference the specific cards for each phoneme in order to determine spelling options. Once modeled, this process is simple for learners to do on their own. It also fosters a strong sense of independence and confidence when spelling and writing. Below are some tips from experiences in my own first and second grade class.

Photo courtesy of Christina, 2nd Grade Teacher
(Photo taken before graphemes were covered)

Tip: Spelling Generalizations
Have discussions regularly about spelling generalizations and how those are conveyed on a sound wall. Ex: /k/ can be spelled c, k, _ck, ch. The _ck is shown on the sound wall with the underscore before the ck because _ck only comes at the end of a word or syllable after a short vowel. Students need to be explicitly told this. Understanding the underscore will help students as they are writing.

Tip: Voiced and Unvoiced Sounds
In the primary grades, many spelling errors are made when mouth placement is the same, but voicing is different. For example: the sounds /t/ and /d/ are produced with the same mouth placement (see the picture below, tiger and dolphin cards). The only difference is that /t/ is unvoiced and /d/ is voiced (notice the yellow megaphone on the /d/ card). On a sound wall, voiced and unvoiced consonant pairs are placed together. See the yellow square images of a megaphone in the picture below? This represents the voiced consonant within the consonant pair. If a student spells spider like this, S-P-I-T-ER, this is an error with voicing. Any time the student spells with an unvoiced rather than a voiced consonant (or visa versa), draw attention to this pair of sounds on the wall. Have students physically touch their throats to feel the vibration of the vocal cords as they pronounce the word. Explicitly explain that mouth placement is the same, but voicing is different. This will increase student awareness and accuracy.

Photo courtesy of Patricia, First Grade Teacher

Tip: Vowel Teams
There are so many vowel teams spellings for students to learn. Sound walls list the frequent vowel teams within the vowel valley. As you teach the vowel team, reveal it on the grapheme card. Students should be taught that vowel teams will only be present within the vowel valley, not on the consonant wall, because vowel teams are made with two or more vowels together (2 – ai, ea, ou, 3 – igh, 4 – eigh). For vowel teams, the mouth is open and the production of the sound is unobstructed by the lips tongue or teeth. With instruction and practice, students will learn to refer to the phoneme card that they need when spelling. Understanding the spelling generalizations and frequency of each vowel team will help as well.

Ideas for Grades 3-5
Display pictures of kids’ faces showing the correct placement of the lips, tongue, and teeth.
There may be more buy-in from older students if you all them to take pictures of their mouths for the wall. 
Spend time discussing how and where the sounds are made, especially new sounds.
Add a quick sound wall review to typical morning meeting
Use mirrors to allow students to see their own mouth placement.
Sound wall cards with accurate key word pictures
Follow your curriculum scope and sequence as you introduce sounds.
Most of the phonemes have probably been taught, however, consider the needs of your class.
Cover graphemes that have not been taught yet.
Reveal graphemes as you explicitly teach each one individually.
Extremely helpful for ELLs and striving readers.

Photo curtesy of Hannah, 3rd Grade Teacher
(No phonemes or graphemes covered, as all have been taught.)

Many times third, fourth, and fifth graders come into our classrooms without a strong foundation in the phonemes and graphemes of English. You may see this very evident in their spelling. Students with difficulties in spelling, often need explicit instruction in phoneme-grapheme correspondence and mapping. Spelling develops at a slower rate than reading from second grade on, so reading and spelling should be taught separately in the upper grades. Sound walls are an excellent reference for students in this situation. They will feel empowered and confident when they can actually use something as a tool to read and spell.

Are you new to using sound walls? Does it interest you? Ready to jump in? What questions do you have? Leave a comment below!

Do you use a sound wall? What benefits have you seen so far? Leave a comment below to share!

Sources and Recommendations

EDVIEW360 Podcast – How to Use Sound Walls to Transform Instruction – Mary Dahlgren & Antonio Fierro

EDVIEW360 Podcast – Retire Your Word Wall: How Sound Walls Support the Science of Reading – Mary Dahlgren

Tools4Reading – Sound Wall resources and free teacher resources – Mary Dahlgren

Wakelet – Sound Wall Collection – Pam Kastner, PaTTAN

LETRS Training 3rd Edition – Professional Development Course – Dr. Lousia Moats & Dr. Carol Tolman

The Reading Teacher’s Top Ten Tools – Professional Development Course – Dr. Deb Glaser

Getting Started with a Sound Wall

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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 a sound wall?

A sound wall is an interactive reading and writing instructional tool for students. By definition, a sound wall focuses on sound, the 44 phonemes in the English language. Sound walls are created to facilitate the connection from speech (spoken language) to print (reading and writing). A sound wall has two main components – a vowel wall (often referred to as a vowel valley) and a consonant wall. They focus student attention to each specific speech sound, rather than each of the 26 letters, and how that sound is formed by the lips, tongue, or teeth. 

Students are directed to first focus on what words sound like because that is what students already know. Sound cards are organized by the sound’s category (vowel or consonant, plus consonant types) and how it is articulated. The place of articulation (where the sound is produced) and the manner articulation (how the sound is produced) are used to determine how sound wall cards are organized and posted for students. Most sound walls have pictures of student mouths or pictures of mouth clipart that show students what the mouth looks like when producing that sound. These pictures are placed above each of the sound cards. Students are encouraged to feel their mouths, look in mirrors, and focus on the vocal cords and air flow in order to determine sounds and their spellings. Commonly used graphemes (spellings) are listed beneath each sound in the frequency that they occur in English. For example, on the /oi/ phoneme card, the grapheme OI will be listed first. Then the grapheme, OY will be listed below the OI. This shows students that the most likely spelling is OI, followed by the next likely spelling OY. Learners use this as a support along with the core instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics.

What is not a sound wall?

Phonics posters, grapheme (common letter combinations in English that spell a specific sound) walls, and word walls are not sound walls. Sound walls focus first on the phonemes (sounds), and then on the graphemes (spellings that represent that sound). Sound walls include all 44 phonemes. If using phonics posters or grapheme walls, that is a wonderful support for students as well. Just remember, that it is not a sound wall if it does not represent all 44 sounds in English.

A Common Comparison

Teachers and parents of elementary age students are typically familiar with word walls. Word walls are common in K-5 classrooms around the country, and the world! Word walls are a student support posted on a classroom wall or placed in a folder. Word walls typically are organized in alphabetical order from A to Z, the 26 letters of the alphabet. Many times, high frequency words and irregular words (often referred to as “sight words”) are placed on the word wall. Words are posted under their initial letter. For example, the word “she” would be placed under letter S. Therefore, words are placed based on their visual first letter, or what you actually see first in the word. Students are encouraged to use the word wall as a resource to help them spell these words. 

Many would see sound walls as another option instead of or in addition to a word wall. I personally do not use a word wall any longer. However, I do see how a word wall may be helpful with more of a vocabulary focus for math, social studies, or science content.

The Common Predicament

Because word walls are organized from A-Z, there are often words posted under a letter that do not match with the word’s initial sound. For example, the word “she” is placed under the letter S on a word wall. Visually, there is an S at the beginning. However, “she” does not begin with the sound /s/…. “she” begins with the sound /sh/. The SH digraph consists of two letters that make one brand new sound. An emerging writer will walk up to the word wall, looking for this word and saying it aloud: “she”. No matter how slowly they say the word or how many times they say it, they will never hear /s/ at the beginning.

Think about this: If the learner does not yet know how to spell the word, then they probably will not know the initial letter either. How will this learner find the word they are looking for? How will they write the word in their story?

The same scenario happens with hundreds of other words in the English language. English has 44 phonemes (sounds). Forty-four. Yet, the English alphabet only has 26 letters. How can we expect all of the words to fit within those 26 letters? We cannot. Think about these words. Where would you place them on a word wall? Where would you place them on a sound wall? What would students be thinking of if they were speaking these words aloud while searching for them on a classroom wall?

that, chat, photo, she, gnat, out, autumn, of, arm, oil, about

A Personal Connection

This is the situation that radically transformed my thought process. Word walls had always been a requirement at each school I’ve worked in. Requirement. As in, “We are coming in with the beginning of the year checklist, and one of the items is WORD WALL”.

About a year ago, I first heard a presenter say something like “Why would you put ‘she’ under S?”. I quickly made a decision to research this more. I was determined to have a classroom support that would be continuously used as a tool in reading and writing instruction and practice. I was determined not to have another “resource” that became wallpaper as students interacted with it less and less.

Fast forward to this year. I have used a sound wall for eight months so far in my first and second grade classroom. It has transformed the way I teach. I have the knowledge to instruct students in the phonemes of our language. Because of using a sound wall and doing my own research to fully understand its components, I am equipped to help my students make sense of our language.

It has also strengthened the way my students interact with words. They now have the knowledge and the tools to read, spell, and write confidently. They aren’t searching for words that are posted. Rather, they are using what they know about the individual sounds in the target word, segmenting them, and determining how to spell each sound. What a way to build self-confidence. You CAN do this. Use your tools to help you.

Never before have I had a student explain the complete reasoning behind why a vowel changes slightly when it’s coarticulated (pronounced together) with a letter like N or M. Now, my students are eager to explain the nasalization of the vowel while pointing to the sound wall. They say /n/, /m/, and /ng/ are nasal sounds and that the sound is produced by air passing through the nose. Therefore, when a vowel is beside a nasal sound, the sound of the vowel also gets pulled into the nose a bit as we get ready to say the sound of the nasal consonant /n/, /m/, /ng/. I don’t think I even knew this last year. And I would never have expected a student to describe it. They are also able to explain the many ways to spell the /j/ sound, with the letter J or with the letter G. They can tell you which is most common and which is used when. I could go on and on…

Student knowledge of speech sounds and how they are written in English has improved. Reading has improved. Spelling has significantly improved. Confidence has increased exponentially. 

Of course, I cannot say that the sound wall caused all of this to happen. Yes, I’m doing tons of other things throughout the day and teaching many different foundational skills. However, I can tell you that using the sound wall has literally changed how I approach teaching everything (phonemic awareness, phonics, spelling, high frequency words, and writing) and it has changed the way my students approach words.

If you are interested in learning more about sound walls, I encourage you to dig into these resources.

Sound Wall Wakelet – a collection of resources about sound walls put together by Pam Kastner from PaTTAN. Such a wealth of information, PD, and free documents to help you on your journey.

Tools4Reading – created by international sound wall expert Mary Dahlgren. Mary Dahlgren’s KidLips products are perfect for building your sound wall. The back of each sound card includes valuable information about the phoneme, how and where it’s articulated, and how it is commonly spelled. Highly Recommend.

Creativity to the Core on Instagram – See highlight labeled “Sound Walls” as well as various posted videos.

Sound Wall with Real Photos – Creativity to the Core on TpT

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions! You can leave a comment below or contact me directly on Instagram @creativitytothecore or by email at creativitytothecore@gmail.com.