Level 5

Level 5 - Recognition and Production of Initial Sounds

Initial sound activities show children that words contain phonemes and introduces how phonemes sound and feel when spoken in isolation.

Individual phonemes are more difficult to specify because their acoustic values vary with the phonemes that precede and follow them in a word ( a phenomenon called co-articulation), whereas syllables have relatively constant values in a word and hence are more readily recognised.  The fact that consonants are “folded” into vowels can be understood by noting the different tongue positions for the beginning /d/ sound when it is followed by /oo/ and by /i/.

I Spy

I spy with my little eye something that starts with / /. Children guess the object that starts with that sound.