How to Create a Sound Wall Your Students Will Actually Use

Incorporating a sound wall in your classroom is the latest and greatest way to use the science of reading and help your little learners on their journey to becoming skilled readers.

SOUND WALLS IN CLASSROOMS: WHAT ON EARTH ARE THEY?

Have you heard the buzz amongst your fellow teachers?  Maybe you heard it while hanging out with your teacher besties or during a professional development course this summer.  Perhaps you’ve heard about it in Teachergram land or saw something about it on Pinterest.  Maybe this blog post is the first time you are hearing about it.  Sound Walls.  They are the new thing.  

Sound Walls aren’t just a passing fad either.  Recent brain research gathered from a variety of fields (psychology, special education, etc.) is coming together to show us exactly what needs to happen in order for students to become proficient at reading.  This convergence of research and ideas is what is being termed…wait for it…the science of reading.  And it works. The Science of Reading tells us that our students need systematic and explicit phonics instruction coupled with a direct application in a decodable text.  The principles guarantee that at least 95% of our young learners can experience reading success in first grade.  THAT is a success rate I like the sound of!

A sound wall can take several forms. In essence it is a visual reminder and reference of the many many graphemes (letters), grapheme combinations, and their accompanying phonemes (sounds).  English is complex and there are a lot of sound-spelling patterns and combinations for students to remember.  Having a big old sound wall for our students to constantly refer to will make all the difference as we embrace what the science of reading is proving: that phonics instruction is at the heart of reading success.

WHY IS A PHONICS SOUND WALL SO HELPFUL?

At the beginning of the 2020-2021 school year I noticed something strange.  My first graders were at unbelievably low reading abilities, collectively lower than I have ever seen in my ten years of teaching first grade.  Perhaps it was because their Kindergarten year had been interrupted in a staggeringly unforeseen way (thanks a lot, Covid).  Perhaps it was because, as a coworker of mine said one day, “They basically had 6 months of summer”.  Many of their parents needed to devote their time to helping their older children with distance learning. The Kindergarteners were a bit of an afterthought.

Well, it showed.  My incoming first graders could hardly read a few basic sight words.  Their phonemic awareness was seriously lacking.  Their phonics knowledge was woefully behind.  They had zero confidence in their ability to read.  In fact, many of them didn’t even identify themselves as a “reader”.  I didn’t need the benchmark testing data (which still makes me shudder) to tell me that we had a problem here.  It was heartbreaking and scary.  This first grade teacher was determined to do something, and do it quick!

I began gleaning information about the science of reading.  I attended professional development courses and read LOTS of literature on the topic of teaching struggling readers. And guess who became a major fangirl of Wiley Blevins’s research (raises hand!). I took away one major thing: my students needed explicit phonics instruction and LOTS of practice applying their phonics knowledge, piece-by-piece, within phonics-heavy texts.

Next, I created the sound wall cards and taped them up to my whiteboard. I made sure my first graders KNEW that they were important.  We practiced them several times a week by chanting them together.  It went a little something like this: “a, a, apple, b, b, balloon, c, c, car…” and so on and so forth.  Whenever we learned a new sound-spelling pattern I made a big deal of it and we triumphantly added it to our wall.  

We used several different sound wall formats. Sometimes we used the bulletin board. Sometimes we chanted our sounds using a projected version of the sound wall via Google Slides.  My students even had their own miniature version and could hold onto their personal sound walls with pride!  The important thing is that they USED them.  I noticed, time and time again, my students looking up at the sound wall board or cross-checking with their personal sound wall while they were working on decoding a text.  It was magic!

HOW TO MAKE A FIRST GRADE SOUND WALL

While a tremendous amount of reading progress is expected of six and seven year-olds, a sound wall doesn’t necessarily have to be specific to first grade, of course.  These cards would totally work for a kindergarten sound wall, a second grade sound wall or for homeschooling.  And a sound wall is beyond easy to make!  Pick a space in your classroom that is highly visible and easy for students to see at all times.  Print out the sound wall cards and laminate, if desired.  Gather a few good bulletin board supplies (fabric, stapler, borders, etc.).  Side note: I LOVE backing my bulletin boards with plain cotton off the yard and it lasts for YEARS.  Also, a few cute bulletin board borders can go a long way.  Remember, we want this wall to be eye-catching so that students will be more than likely to engage with it.

Adhere your cards to your board either by stapling or using this magical tape.  I love this stuff because you can easily pull off the cards to use for teaching whenever you may need to.  I do this all the time when I am doing guided reading!  Arrange your cards however  you like or in whichever way works with your scope and sequence.  You may choose to add to the wall as you go throughout the year or to display all of the cards from the beginning.  I prefer the latter so that the students become aware of what is coming down the line as far as phonics learning goes.  And there you have it!  A perfect sound wall that your students will actually use!

EXTEND YOUR PHONICS TEACHING WITH THE SCIENCE OF READING

As mentioned before, the science of reading is a convergence of new research that indicates the best practices we should utilize to effectively teach our readers.  It tells us that we need to teach phonics in a systematic and explicit way with lots of repetition and consistency.  Not only that, but we need to make sure that our students’ new phonics knowledge is directly applied and practiced with quality texts.

Once your students have initially learned a phonics skill you can help them practice the skill with decodable texts!  Decodable books (or passages or readers) have mostly decodable words.  They should not have a lot of tricky rule-breaker words.  If I just taught my students about the short a sound I would want to give them a decodable book with MANY examples of short a words.  The more perfect practice a student gets, the better!  

Decodable books can be tricky to find, especially when you need to have multiple copies or a class set.  I have created a set of printable decodable readers that I will be using with my class this year.  You are welcome to grab that right here.  Decodable books and the direct application of phonics skills are the PERFECT complement to the sound wall in your classroom.  With a little consistency and lots of practice your little learners will be reading with the best of them in no time!

If you have any questions about the science of reading, implementing a sound wall in your classroom, or incorporating decodable books in your teaching, please reach out to me!  You can leave a comment on this post or shoot me a quick email at shipshapeelementary@gmail.com.  Happy Teaching!