When we are first teaching students how to read, it can be a real challenge! Typically, you start with the sounds or the phonetics of the letters. From there, you teach students the sounds that th-, ch-, sh- etc. make. Once your students know the basic sounds, they can work on phoneme mapping!
What is Phoneme Mapping?
Phoneme mapping is looking at words and focusing on the number of sounds in the words. When you’re teaching students the concept of phoneme mapping in elementary, it’s really important to stress that the number of letters and the number of phonemes in a word might be different. For example, the word “this” has four letters but three phonemes: /th/i/s. So, how do you get your students to understand this? By using phoneme mapping.
How to Practice Phoneme Mapping in Elementary
When you first start phoneme mapping with your students, you can use sound boxes or Elkonin boxes. These are little boxes that your students can write just the phonemes in. You can also use little markers from your math manipulatives to slide into the box as the students say each phoneme out loud. This is a great class activity because students will learn from listening to not only you, but their classmates as well.
If you don’t like sound boxes or you need something quick when you have five minutes to spare, you can break out the popits and have them press one of the buttons in for each phoneme. Whenever you can get manipulatives involved with phoneme mapping in elementary, it will work so much better. Students do better when they can physically do something while learning. It’s simple muscle memory.
How to Reinforce Phoneme Mapping
Once your students have gotten great at phoneme mapping their CVC words, you can start playing fun games to reinforce the skill. The nice thing about some of these games is they are great for those five minute fillers or morning starters to get your students focused for the day. So, what phoneme mapping games can you play with your elementary students? So many!
Simon Says
Playing a simple game of Simon Says can be a great way to reinforce phoneme mapping BEFORE your students have it done. What you say is something like, “Simon says touch your l/e/g. Just like the rules of Simon says, whoever doesn’t touch their leg is out. You can continue playing Simon Says using CVC words or more complex words as well. The point is, when you are playing Simon Says, you are using the phonemes to say the word instead of just saying it. So instead of arm you’re saying ar/m. This is great for modeling phoneme mapping in elementary.
Play Phoneme Hopscotch
Phoneme Hopscotch is a great game to play with students when they need to get up and move. All you need to do is have the hopscotch dots or squares set up. Then when you say a word like “dog” your students must hop and say each phoneme. So for the word dog, that would be three hops and the student would say d/o/g. This can go on for many of your CVC words or wherever you’re at with phoneme mapping. My students have always loved this because they get to move around. Plus, it feels like playing.
Break It Down
This is a whole class game that can last as long as you want it to. So, it’s great for those last five minutes before lunch or recess. With Break It Down, the teacher says a word, and the class breaks it down. This is helpful for students who are struggling because they will be able to hear it repeatedly. Once you feel like your students are getting the hang of phoneme mapping, you can start going faster.
Phoneme mapping in elementary is an essential skill students need to learn how to “sound it out.” When we are teaching students to read, we always tell them to sound it out. If you teach phoneme mapping in elementary with manipulatives and add in games, your students will be reading better in no time!
You can also check out my new video on YouTube about teaching Graphing to young students. Just click on the photo below
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