What are the features of PLD’s Sound Wall Charts?

Teaching the 44 speech sounds of the English language requires accurate modelling and articulation, pedagogy that sound walls support. The PLD sound wall charts focus on the phonemes (or individual sounds) of speech and link to the PLD scheduled phonic sequence. Each phoneme-specific chart features:

• Charts focused upon the phonemes and phonics for the Early Years to Year 3 classes.
• The corresponding visual of a mouth.
• A simple description (e.g. tongue tapping sound, lip popping sound, peeking tongue sound, coughing or huffing sound)
• A detailed description.
• Icons identifying if the phoneme is a long or short, quiet or noisy, or vowel or consonant sound.
• Areas to add words (making the charts interactive rather than static).
• The related phonic concepts for each year level.

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.

Individual Sound Wall Charts:

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