The Phonic Charts are only available as an eBook.

The hard copy resource has been replaced by Sound Wall Charts.

Children require knowledge of the alphabet in order to learn to read, spell and write. Alphabet sound knowledge is the key to early literacy learning, rather than letter naming. For example:

• In order to read the word ‘dog’ a child must recognise each letter symbol and convert each symbol into the correct sound ‘d’, ‘oh’, ‘g’ and then the child must blend the sounds together (phonemic blending ability).
• In order to spell the basic word ‘cup’ a child must first ‘sound-out’ (or phonemically segment) ‘c’, ‘u’, ‘p’ and then the child must recall and apply in the correct order the alphabet symbols.

As these examples illustrate, alphabetic letter naming does not help a child to blend nor segment the sounds in words. It is their knowledge of the alphabet sounds which allows them to read and spell the words. For this reason, Alphabet sound charts contain bright and attractive charts that represent the alphabet sounds and the mouth position that produces the sound for early literacy learners.

Within this resource, designed by Speech Pathologists for teachers and parents, a multi-sensory approach to teaching the alphabetic letter sounds has been adopted:

• Children see what mouth looks like when producing the alphabet sound (via the visual representation of the mouth on each chart).
• Children kinaesthetically feel what their mouth is doing when they produce the alphabet sounds.
• Children also visually connect a core picture/word with the alphabet sound (e.g. ‘mix’, ‘tiger’ and ‘snake’).
• From an auditory (and phonemic awareness) perspective children identify the initial sound in simple target words (e.g. tiger starts with a ‘t’).

The recommended order of presentation

• Group 1: s, p, n, i, a, t (cards with a yellow border)
• Group 2: m, r, h, e, d, c (cards with a blue border)
• Group 3: f, l, g, o, u b (cards with a green border)
• Group 4: w, j, v, k, z, y, q, x (cards with a red border)

Includes:

• 26 x A4 colour cards
• General information card

This resource is mentioned in the Foundation Teaching Sequence Manual on page 12.

Other phonic posters, available in print or as eBooks, in this series:

• Phonic Charts – Stage 1
• Phonic Charts – Stage 2
• Phonic Charts – Stage 3
• Phonic Charts – Stage 4

Sound Wall Charts:

• Sound Wall Charts for the Early Years (26 A4 coloured charts which focus on the alphabet)
• Sound Wall Charts for Foundation (42 A4 coloured charts which focus on the alphabet and Stage 1 digraphs)
• Sound Wall Charts for Year 1 (49 A4 coloured charts which focus on Stage 1 & Stage 2 digraphs)
• Sound Wall Charts for Year 2 & 3 (71 A4 coloured charts which focus on Stage 1, Stage 2 & Stage 3 digraphs)

What is a sound wall display?

A sound wall is an interactive display of phonic concepts and words that is organised by and/or emphasises individual sounds (phonemes). Commonly there is one wall for consonants and one for vowels.

Sound walls focus on the formation of phonemes which gives young students a structure that helps them understand the foundation of language and written literacy. As we know from current research about the science of reading, children learn to read through the application of orthographic mapping, a speech-to-print process where letters are mapped to known speech sounds. Teachers need to harness this modern understanding by using sound wall displays as a teaching and learning tool in their classrooms to support the process of learning to read and spell.