Free alphabet letter sound sheets, PowerPoints and individual phonemic awareness worksheets for each letter of the alphabet…
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Alphabet Letter Sounds and Phonemic Awareness…
Parents are often encouraged to teach their young children the names of the letters in the alphabet, but learning the sounds that letters represent is more important for developing beginning readers’ phonemic awareness.
Understanding that letters represent the spoken sounds in words is the key idea that underpins phonics – the main method used in schools for early reading instruction.
You can download our free resources below, but you might find it helpful to read our guidance notes about the resources first:
Guidance Notes
Some letters can represent different sounds in different words, and children need to learn all of the variations eventually. However, providing too many alternatives in the early stages might be overwhelming for some children.
The PowerPoints and printable resources on this page focus on the most common sounds represented by letters in words used in early phonics instruction. We think this is a sensible place to start, but you might encounter additional letter-sound correspondences if you use other sources.
Alternative resources for beginning readers might use some of the following examples. It’s fine to use these for variety, but it could be helpful to explain to children that some letters represent different sounds in these words.
- The sound represented by the letter a in ‘Angel’ and ‘acorn’ is different from the sound found in words like apple, ant, cat, lamp and tap.
- Circle and centre (center). In these words, the letter c represents the sound often associated with the letter s. The sound in cab, cap, cub, car and cow is more commonly taught in early reading instruction.
- The sound represented by the letter e in ‘Ear’ or ‘eagle’ is different from the sound found in words like egg, elephant, ten and pet.
- Giraffe or giant. In these words, the letter g represents the sound often associated with the letter j. Words such as gap, gate, big and goat contain the more common sound represented by the letter g.
- The sound represented by the letter i in ‘Ice cream’ or ‘iron’ is different from the sound found in words like insect, igloo, tip, fit and iguana.
- Knife and knee. The letter k is ‘silent’ in these words, so they might not be ideal for beginners. Kick, kit, key, kite and kangaroo are simpler examples.
- The sound represented by the letter u in ‘Unicorn’ and ‘uniform’ is different from the sound found in words like umbrella, unhappy, up, mud and fun.
- The sounds represented by the letter o in ‘Onion’, ‘oven’, ‘oval’, ‘owl’ and ‘one’ are different from the sound found in words such as on, ox, ostrich, dog and otter.
- X-ray or xylophone for x. The common ‘x’ sound isn’t normally heard at the start of words. For example, in xylophone, the ‘x’ actually sounds like a ‘z’, and in x-ray it doesn’t represent the common sound found in words such as fox, box, six and taxi.
- Zebra is fine for most British English accents. However, some USA accents pronounce the Z in zebra as ‘zee’ rather than the more common sound found in zip, zero, zoo, buzz and fizz.
You will notice that we use ‘qu’ instead of ‘q’ in our printable resources. This isn’t a miss-print; it simply recognises that ‘q’ almost always appears in words with a ‘u’ following it. For this reason, many phonics programmes teach the letter combination ‘qu’, rather than ‘q’ on its own, and we think there’s some sense in doing this, although it’s not essential.
Finally, we explain how you can teach your child the letter sounds in our phonics article. This should be helpful if you don’t have any experience of teaching early reading.
Our free downloadable alphabet PowerPoint slide show is a good way of adding some variety when you are teaching letter sounds.
Click on one of the images to download the slide show.
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If your device doesn’t have Microsoft Office installed, there are various ways you can now view PowerPoint presentations, as discussed in this link.
You can also view PowerPoint presentations using a Google Drive account as discussed in this article and shown in this video.
A-Z Letter Sound and Phonemic Awareness Worksheets
Click on the links below to download a free pdf worksheet for each letter of the alphabet.
The Teach Your Monster to Read Site also has a fantastic range of free games that can be printed off for classroom or home use. Click on the following link to access their Tabletop Phonics games.
Click on the following link to access some of our other free phonics and phonological awareness PowerPoints, worksheets and printable resources.
Further Resources:
Another way to add some variety to learning letter sounds is to register with some of the specialist reading programmes that offer free trials.
For example:
Parents and teachers can register for a 30-day free trial with Reading Eggs. This allows you to access over 500 highly interactive games and fun animations for developing Phonemic awareness, Phonics, Fluency, Vocabulary and Comprehension.
A 30-day free trial is also available from ABCmouse.com. This is a leading online educational website for children ages 2–8. With more than 9,000 interactive learning activities that teach reading, math, science, art, music, and more.
Although it’s not quite free, you can get a 30-day trial with the award-winning Hooked on Phonics programme for just $1.
IXL Learning cover 8000 skills in 5 subjects including phonics and reading comprehension. You can click on the following link to access a 7-day free trial if you live in the US.
If you live outside of the US you can get 20% off a month’s subscription if you click on the ad. below: