Choosing the Right Keywords for Letter Sounds Instruction

Finding the right keyword to use as a reference for supporting students as you are teaching letter sounds is very important. Many letter sounds resources and alphabet lines include pictures or keywords that actually make letter sound learning more difficult. You might be thinking you can just use any word that begins with that letter. In some cases, you are right. We can teach students the sound for “B” is connected to ball or bat or boy. No matter which one of those that we teach, students will be successful with that letter sound. However there are many letters that we need to be very intentional with. Let’s look at what those tricky letter sounds are and why they’re so tricky, along with effective keywords for letter sounds you can use with your students.

In this video I walk through keywords for letter sounds I like to use and have included in my printable alphabet chart, linked below. I also talk about things to be mindful of with many different letters, but especially those contained here. One other topic worth mentioning, though not discussed here, is stop and continuous sounds. As we teach letter sounds, it’s important we teach them correctly and without the trailing schwa.

Hard C and Soft G

It’s common practice to teach the letter sounds with a hard c and a soft g. For this reason, our pictures should absolutely match that! You might be surprised at what is created, though, especially by non-educators or those that mass produce letter resources. I have seen a giraffe frequently used for that g sound. That’s confusing for students. If we want our youngest students to learn that the sound we associate with “g” is /g/ and not /j/, we need to be consistent in presenting them words that begin with the soft g sound like gift and girl.

C is a bit more consistent in resources. Cat is frequently used as a keyword and it’s a solid one. It is important just to note that the soft c sound should not be used. That means words like city or cent would not make good keywords for the letter sounds.

Vowel Sounds

The vowel sounds can be tricky due to some sounds feeling and sounding similar for students. Some students may struggle with the differences between “e” and “i”. Some others may struggle with “a” and “o”. For this reason, I like to use articulatory gestures to support my instruction of the short vowel sounds for those students that need additional support. In additional to physical movements with those students that need additional support, the keywords we use can make a big difference- especially for “e”.

The letter e can be confusing for some students, or can cause confusion, depending on the sound that comes next in the word we are using. For example you might have seen the word envelope or elephant used to teach the letter sound /e/. But that is difficult for many kids because the first sound they then hear in that word is the name of the letter “L” or the letter “N”. When we say the names of the letters “l” “m” and “n” we actually begin with an /e/. if we want our students to be successful in learning the short vowel sound for the letter e we need to be sure we are teaching them keywords that don’t have an “l” “m” and “n” next. I like to use the word edge I also like to use the word Edge because it connects with the articulatory gesture I use to support my kids that have a difficult time learning vowel sounds I have a quick short on using articulatory gestures I will link below

While we talked about not using “l” “m” and “n” as the second letter with the letter e, with an “i” it may actually be helpful. I like to use the words “in” and “on” as keywords. It’s easy to have an articulatory gesture for those words, and because they’re similar, it emphasizes the sound differences. Because the /i/ and /o/ themselves are such different sounds, it also doesn’t make them difficult for students, and instead helps students focus on the differences between them. I have seen ice cream frequently in resources. We don’t want our youngest kiddos to be learning a keyword for I that does not include the short i sound.

You can get this free Alphabet and Keywords for Letter Sounds chart here.

The Letter Sound for X

X is another one that I have commonly seen inappropriate keywords used to teach. We need our students to learn that for the letter “x”, we give two sounds. Those two sounds are co-articulated together. No words in English begin with those sounds. When we give students keywords for things like x-ray or xylophone, we are teaching them the name of that letter X because that is how we articulate that letter at the beginning of those words. I think it is much more important that we teach students that we use “x” as a final sound in a word. For that reason, I teach my students with box. Now we absolutely have to teach our students that they are looking for that keyword at the end of the word instead of at the beginning like all of the rest of the keywords we use. But I think it’s more important that we teach our students the correct letter sound for that word rather than giving an “x” at the beginning of the word.

You might think this is a pretty simple or very well-known concept. However, letter sound keywords have prevented me from purchasing many, many materials both at teacher stores on TPT stores or within sets at any old store where I can’t see what is inside or with incorrect and confusing keywords for letter sounds. Whether you are shopping for materials online, or in person, keep the appropriate keywords in the back of of your mind as you shop, and don’t buy things if you can’t see what the key words are that are connected with those letter sounds.