Medial Sounds-Phonics Instruction

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After working this year with a great group of students who needed a little extra help with reading I created an interactive activity to use with them to help them read and identify those medial or middle sounds.  I wanted to share with you a visual clue I use to help my little readers remember how to read words and identify the sounds they make. 

1.  We started off using very simple CVC words.  We wrote words like cat, bat, hat, on the board to start off.  In order to help us read the word in the whole group we used a visual clue to help us identify each sound.  This is something I use all the time to help them understand reading words from left to right.  I start off by turning my back to the class and modeling to them how the whole process works.  I raise my left hand and say this is where I start reading my word.  I say a word like cat and then tap my left shoulder as I say the "c" sound.

Clipart courtesy of Creative Clips

2.  Next, I say the next sound in the word of cat "a" and then tap the top of my head.  And since we are focusing on middle sounds I make sure I tell them that my head is the middle sound of the word and this is where we are listening for those sounds. It looks something like this. 

3.  And finally we get to the end of the word cat and identify the ending sound "t".  For this one we tap our right shoulder. 

After I model the whole word then I model going from left shoulder to right sounding out the word cat along the way as I use the visual cues I showed them to help them remember. 

4.   I stop and ask them where was the beginning sound find your beginning sound we all tap our left shoulders, then I ask where the middle "a" sound is and we all tap our heads , and finally we get to the ending sound and tap our right shoulders.  And then we all tap it together blending the sounds together . 

As we began our lesson using this method we also used this pack to go along with our activities and the kids had a blast using their cameras to find and make words using the correct middle sound. 

And just for you all here is a little freebie from the pack....just click to print your freebie out. 

Enjoy!