Using Sound Walls in Teaching Reading: These Tools and Classes Can Help You Be Your Best This Fall

                      

There is so much I’m looking forward to this summer! One of those things is learning about classroom resources and summer courses I can share with teachers and students.

Because I love reading so much – and I love helping students learn to read well and develop a love of reading, too – I was really happy to learn about Tools4Reading.com, and the dedicated folks there who introduced me to their Sound Walls Solutions resources. 

Let me tell you about the Sound Walls Solutions resources too.

Sound Wall 

A Sound Wall allows teachers to organize sounds (phonemes) and the different letters (graphemes) used to make them. These have been used in speech and language programs, as well as intervention programs for struggling learners, for many years. Because there are 44 sounds in the English language and only 26 letters, classroom resources like sound walls are needed to help students learn to read and progress with literacy learning. 

With a sound wall, teachers go from speech to print INSTEAD of print to speech. Many teachers I know use sound walls already, but Tools4Reading.com provides them with the resources to implement them well.

Summer Classes

This summer, Tools 4 Reading is offering Sound Wall classes, which are affordable, flexible sessions for individuals–you don’t have to go through your district to enroll. If you want some instruction on the science and implementation of sound walls instruction, check out these online classes that run from the end of June throughout August. 

Visit https://www.tools4reading.com/book-online to for the schedule and to register.

(They also offer PD for reading teachers called Top 10 Tools for Teachers – a topic for another blog sometime!)

Cards, Images, and a Manual for Teachers 

Tools4Reading.com offers an array of classroom resources that you might find helpful. The one I spent some time with was the Tools 4 Reading Value Pack, which is a handy collection with several impactful resources:

Sound Wall Solutions™ is the manual, which is really the heart of the elements included in a Value Pack they offer. The manual helps bridge the gap between understanding sound walls and allows teachers to quickly integrate sound walls into daily classroom reading instruction.

There are Phoneme/Grapheme Instructional Cards, which feature the most common patterns for reading and spelling. There are 47 cards, and they detail the reason behind the various spellings in our language.

There are also Phoneme/Grapheme mini cards for kids, perfectly sized for young learners’ hands. 

I loved the two posters included in the Value Pack! These two posters represent 41 speech sounds of the English language, and are arranged by the place and manner of articulation.

This is a great resource when teaching phonemic awareness—because students can easily make connections by making their mouth look like the one on the poster. 

Also included is a collection called Kid Lips, which is a simple yet so effective way to help children learn to form sounds and words correctly. The 100-page instructional guide includes short lessons and tips for instruction.

There is an inset image to match the correct Kid Lips™ picture card with each lesson. The cards feature pictures of children’s mouths to illustrate the correct placement of the tongue, teeth, and lips when producing specific sounds. 

Are you interested in these resources for your fall classes? 

You can order the Value Pack now and let them know you read about it here on my blog. Just use LIBRARY10 as the discount code when you go to https://www.tools4reading.com/ to order. 

I hope you’ll check these out! I know you and your students will love them.