Teaching · Reading Intervention

Sun is three sounds.
Ship is three too.

Segmenting a spoken word into each of its sounds is the phonemic awareness skill most closely tied to spelling. Each card splits a word into sound boxes, counts sounds against letters and gives a tip, from two-sound words to five-sound words with blends.

Make a set of wordsWhat you get
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Included with Caveat Classroom and Whole-school licenses. Or get it in the Reading Intervention toolkit, $49 for 51 items.

Make a set of words to segment

The worked example is made up: a kindergartner on three-sound words and a first grader on four- and five-sound words. Saved on this device only.

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What you get

Teaching · Reading Intervention$12 · included with Classroom and Whole-school licenses

What you finish with
A set of 6, 10 or 16 words chosen by number of sounds (two to five) and kind (one letter per sound, two letters for one sound, long vowels), each with its sound boxes, sound and letter count and a tip, plus notes.
Who it is for
Reading interventionists, special education teachers, classroom teachers teaching phonics and tutors working with a structured literacy sequence.
Format
Browser card maker with saved sets. Prints the words as cut-out cards or as a list for a lesson plan or home reading; presents one word at a time for a screen at the table; downloads a spreadsheet (.csv); exports and imports a file.
Access
$12 one-time, yours on every device you sign in on; the tool opens once you are signed in with it. Included with Caveat Classroom and Whole-school licenses. Also in the Reading Intervention toolkit ($49) and the Teaching Suite pass ($199), and 1 more bundle. Everything you type stays in this browser; nothing is sent to Caveat.
Where it lives
The Reading Intervention space in Caveat Teaching.
Support
Questions about access, an order or a correction: team@caveatacademic.com.

How to use it

  1. Say the word aloud; the student repeats it without looking at the card.
  2. The student stretches it and pushes one counter into a box per sound.
  3. Check against the sound boxes on the card.
  4. Move from two and three sounds to blends, then to words where letters and sounds differ.
  5. Note dropped or added sounds and print the set for the next lesson.

Make a set of words

What phoneme segmentation is

Sounds, not lettersSay itSay the word whole: sunThe student repeats itStretch and pushsss-uuu-nnnOne counter into one boxper soundThree boxes for sunCheck the countship has 4 lettersand 3 soundsCount what you hearSounds, not lettersSay itSay the word whole: sunThe student repeats itStretch and pushsss-uuu-nnnOne counter into one box per soundThree boxes for sunCheck the countship has 4 lettersand 3 soundsCount what you hear
Drawn for this page. Sound boxes of this kind are often called Elkonin boxes.

By ear first

Segmenting is an oral skill: the student hears a word and says each sound. Showing the printed word comes later, when sounds are linked to letters.

Why it matters

Segmenting is the reverse of blending, and it is how students spell: to write “stamp” they need all five sounds in order. It is one of the strongest early predictors of reading and spelling.

Count sounds, not letters

Ship has four letters but three sounds; cake has four letters and three sounds. Words like these teach that sounds and letters are counted differently.

Sources

  1. Moats, L. C. (1994). The missing foundation in teacher education: Knowledge of the structure of spoken and written language. Annals of Dyslexia, 44, 81 to 102. PMID 24234047.
  2. Moats, L. C. (2020). Speech to Print: Language Essentials for Teachers (3rd ed.). Brookes. Syllable types and spelling conventions.
  3. Ehri, L. C. (2014). Orthographic mapping in the acquisition of sight word reading, spelling memory, and vocabulary learning. Scientific Studies of Reading, 18(1), 5 to 21.
  4. National Reading Panel (2000). Teaching Children to Read, phonemic awareness instruction findings. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Words and phrases were written for this page; the example sets and students are made up. Sound boxes follow general American English; syllable divisions follow the common structured literacy conventions, and dictionaries sometimes divide a word differently. Nothing you type is sent to Caveat. Support: team@caveatacademic.com.