Alphabet Letter Sound PowerPoints Worksheets and Printable Resources

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.