Building Mouth Awareness for Reading, Spelling, & Speech
The key to helping students develop phonemic awareness and become independent in reading and spelling includes teaching them to use the 3 senses, hearing, seeing, and feeling in the task. When students have sensory feedback from their eyes, ears, and mouth, they can be more aware of when there is a mismatch in what they read or wrote than if they are just depending on sight (what the letter looks like) and sound.
During reading, spelling, and phonics activities, students can be led to discover the look and feel of sounds associated with graphemes through questioning and labeling. Questioning may range from general to specific depending on age and ability of students. Mirrors are helpful for many students.
Place of Production:
General:
What parts of your mouth do you use to say /sound /?
More specific:
Did your lips move? How did your lips move?
Did your tongue move? How did your tongue move? Where did you put your
tongue?
Specific Choice and Contrast:
Did your tongue go up or down?
Is your tongue in the front or back of your mouth?
Are your lips straight or puckered?
Manner of Production:
Did your breath (air) pop out or flow out?
Is it a mouth sound or nose sound?
Voicing:(Ask students to place hand on “voice box” to see if there is a vibration OR place hands over ears to discover which one is noisy (can hear it in your head) and which one is quiet. “Voiced” and “Unvoiced” can also be used.)
Is your voice on or off?
Is it a quiet sound or a noisy sound?
LabelingSounds
After students discover how sounds are produced in their mouths, a label can be suggested that helps them remember how the sounds feel in their mouths, e.g. Quiet Tip Tapper for /t/, Noisy Tip Tapper for /d/.
Labels that describe the manner/place/feel of sounds, e.g. Lip Poppers /p-b/, Front Tongue Lifter /l/ are better reminders for sound-symbol relationships and correct sound production than traditional, fanciful labels like “Silly Snake sound” for /s/.
Labels and description can be used to call attention to phoneme production when students make pronunciation errors in reading or talking or produce incorrect spelling (Ex: “This letter makes our mouths say “k”. K is a tongue scraper. Feel how we scrape our tongue against the top of our mouth.”)
Labels and Description
(See handout: How Phonemes Are Produced-Expanded for more complete descriptions.)
Quiet Noisy Brother
Tongue Scrapers...... k ...... g
Back of your tongue against the roof of your mouth to scrape the air out.
Lip Poppers...... p ...... b
Lips together, then pop the sound out.
Tip Tappers ...... t ...... d
Lift your tongue tip behind your top teeth (bumpy spot) and tap the air out.
Skinny Air ...... s ...... z
Tongue on the bumpy spot behind your top teeth. Teeth make a fence so only skinny air can come out.
Fat Air ...... sh ...... zh
Pucker your lips and use your tongue to push air out.
Fat Pushed Air ...... ch ...... j
Pucker your lips and tap your tongue (on the bumpy spot behind top teeth) to punch the air out.
Lip Coolers ...... f ...... v
Bite your bottom lip and send air out to cool it.
Tongue Coolers...... th (with)...... th (the)
Gently bite your tongue tip and send air out to cool it.
Front Tongue Lifter...... l
Lift the front of your tongue behind your top teeth, turn on your voice, pull your tongue down.
Back Tongue Lifter...... r
Lift the back of your tongue, turn on your voice.
Nose Sounds...... m ...... n ...... ng
m-Close your lips and turn on your voice; n-Lift your whole tongue and turn on your voice;
ng-Lift the back of your tongue and make the sound through your nose.
Wind Sounds ...... w ...... h ...... wh
w, wh-blow a little wind through your lips; h-open your mouth and push some air out
adapted from: Lindamood-Bell Phoneme Sequencing Program (LiPS) for Reading, Spelling, and Speech
C.Mixon, Nov., 2012