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What’s the difference? Understanding phonological awareness, phonemic awareness and phonics

Sound Waves Literacy

Updates to the Australian Curriculum are shining a spotlight on teaching phonological awareness (in particular, phonemic awareness) and phonics. So whether you’re a novice or have been teaching spelling and reading this way for many years, there’s never been a…
Learning is child's play! Four fun phonics games no student can resist

Sound Waves Literacy

Wind back the clock a few decades and you’d be lucky to find more than a handful of teachers using games as serious (and seriously fun!) teaching tools.
Sound Waves Charts: The order of phonemes

Sound Waves Literacy

The order of the consonant phonemes on the Sound Waves charts is essentially alphabetical. As most students learn alphabetical order early in life, the phoneme order on the charts enables students to find grapheme examples for phonemes quickly and easily when spelling…
Why does Sound Waves Literacy only teach 43 phonemes?

Sound Waves Literacy

Ever wondered why Sound Waves Literacy has only 43 sounds while some other phonics programs have 44? The reason is simple: the 44th sound is rarely spoken in standard Australian English. It’s far more common in British English. In other words,…
The vowel sound in 'old' – a good example of allophony

Sound Waves Literacy

By Tom Mylne, PhD (Linguistics), GradDipEd.
The purpose of this article is to discuss the pronunciation of “o before l”, as in old, doll, dole, bowl, and many other words. But first, a few words about the theoretical framework.
What is a split digraph?

Sound Waves Literacy

A split digraph is when one sound splits the a, e, i, o, or u and the final e. For example, stage has a split digraph but not change.
What is a blend?

Sound Waves Literacy

Blends, also known as consonant clusters, are sequences of two or three consonant sounds. The words snap, clip and split begin with blends. The words jump, desk and milk end in blends.
Segmenting with confidence (part one): Tips for teaching segmenting

Sound Waves Literacy

Segmenting words by counting the number of phonemes (sounds) in a word is an essential skill for developing competency in spelling.
Segmenting with confidence (part two): Dealing with those trickier words

Sound Waves Literacy

Now it’s time to find out how to deal with trickier words, giving you and your students the confidence to segment any word that comes your way.