After students have mastered syllable manipulation, they are ready to manipulate sounds in words. In such activities, students are asked to add or delete sounds to words. Like syllable manipulation, all of these activities are done orally.
Explicit Instruction
If you are intervening to support your students' ability to manipulate sounds in words, you should start by explicitly teaching the skill. This sounds like:
Activity A: Sound Deletion
Tell the student a one-syllable word. Then, ask student to delete the initial or final consonant sound or to delete a sound within the word. “Say pink. Now say pink without the /p/.” [ink]
Sound Deletion in Action
Watch this clip to see how to execute Sound Deletion. Notice how the teacher has the student say the word first before prompting him to delete a sound. This strategy ensures that the student can say the word correctly first.
Think about the following scenario, which takes place after a teacher has explicitly taught a lesson about how to manipulate sounds in a word:
Teacher: "Say truck."
Student: "Truck."
Teacher: "Now say truck without the /k/."
Student: "Uck."
When you are planning your lessons, you should anticipate that your student will make errors throughout the activity. Here is a series of prompts that you can use to respond to errors. Keep in mind that all students are different, and students respond differently to different types of feedback.
| Level of Support | Description of Scaffold | Script |
|---|---|---|
| Smallest scaffold | Try again! Allows student multiple opportunities to practice new skill. You are trying to determine if the student needed another time to practice to get correct answer or if you need to reteach this skill. | "Let's have you try that again." |
| Medium scaffold | Provide resources. Allows the student to use resources to figure out the answer (including helpful supports such as a visual cue or a prompt).
|
"Which sound is the /k/ in truck?" "That's right, the ending sound." "Now, see if you can say just the beginning of the word truck." |
| Highest scaffold | Model, Lead, Test, Retest. Model for the student using this gradual release correction procedure adopted from Carnine, D.W., Silbert, J., Kame'enui, E. J. & Tarver, S. G. (2004). Direct instruction reading (4th Ed). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson. | 1. Teacher says the correct answer. "Tru." 2. Teacher models: "My turn. Truck without /k/." (Signal.) "Tru." 3. Teacher leads: "Let's do it together. Truck without /k/." (Signal.) "Tru." (Teacher responds with the students.) 4. Teacher tests: "Your turn. Truck without /k/." (Signal.) "Tru." |
If your student struggles to meet your objective, there are various techniques that you might try to adjust the activity to your student's needs.
| Activity | Description of strategy | Script |
|---|---|---|
| Sound Deletion | Back it up! If students are continuing to struggle to delete or add individual sounds to words, go back to practicing syllable manipulation. | "Let's try to segment a word into syllables." |