Tools for Building Phonological Awareness: #2 Puzzle Words

Ultimate Literacy Phonological Phonemic Awareness Tool #2: Puzzle Words

An Affordable Alternative to Bjorem Speech Sound Cues

From over 33 years of experience as a speech-language pathologist, this resource brings together the best strategies, tools, tips and tricks that I have to support children with speech sounds.

Contents:

• 687 Puzzle Words plus 50 Compound Words
• Suggestions for Games and Activities
• Ultimate Sound Cues to add meaning and boost learning
• Teaching Principles

Sample including: Word Lists, Game Ideas, Sound Cues, TOC

Benefits:

Phonemic Awareness, also called Phonological Awareness, is a crucial foundational skill for early reading and spelling skills. Children need to be able to recognize and manipulate sounds to be successful at early literacy. Parents, teachers and therapists can help children learn these skills and impact a child’s reading, writing, and overall academic success.

The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, ASHA, recognizes the importance of phonemic skills for both speech sound development and early literacy. Speech Therapists are able to work on phonemic awareness in unique ways.

Seven Essential Skills for Phonemic Awareness:

• Recognize and Produce Rhymes
• Blend Sounds Together
• Break Words Apart into Syllables and Sounds
• Deletion – Take Syllables/Sounds Out of Words
• Recognize Sounds in Different Positions of Words
• Manipulate Sounds in Words to Change One Word to Another
• Sound Letter Correspondence – Knowing what Sounds Letters Make

The Ultimate Literacy program provides 3 sets of tools: Rhyming Sets / Word Families, Puzzle Words and Minimal Pairs. These are fun and effective materials for working on all of the essential skills. Each tool is provided in a separate volume. This Tool is Puzzle Words.

To add more meaning, each sound in every practice word is paired with my Ultimate Speech Sound Cues. This pairs a Picture Symbol, a Label and a Hand Gesture for each sound in English.

Sound Cues provide extra information that helps children understand what sound each letter makes, what sounds make up words and how to manipulate sounds in words. English is confusing, sound cues help.

The Picture Symbols and the sounds they represent are included with each set of tools. The full Speech Sound Cues Program, including the hand gestures for each sound and more information can be downloaded for free on my website at: Ultimate Sound Cues

Tool #2 Puzzle Words
Puzzle Words are words that have been broken down into sounds and word parts. Each word is represented by a fun image, the letters that spell the word and the Sound Symbols for each sound. The letters and symbols are spaced so that they can be cut apart. Having separate pieces helps with putting sounds together and breaking them apart.

There are 3 levels of Puzzle Words:

• 196, Two Sound Words such as Bye, Pay and Zoo
• 339, Three Sound Words such as Cat, Dish and Sheep
• 152, Blends such as Block, Clam and Grape

I’ve also included a set of 50 different Compound Words such as Airplane, Catfish and Playdough. These have the main word with its sounds and then the words that they can be broken down into.

Puzzle Words help with these essential skills:

• Putting Sounds and Word Parts Together
• Breaking words into parts and sounds
• Deletion of Sounds
• Recognizing Sounds in Different Positions of Words
• Sound Letter Correspondence

This program contains the same tools and ideas that I use to support the children and parents that I see in my practice. I hope you find them helpful.

Please let me know I you have any questions.

Garth Schindel SLPatHome
SLP@Speech-TherapyAtHome.com