A neat little folder containing moveable alphabet letter tiles is a great way to promote early reading and spelling skills. The folder is designed to encourage phoneme manipulation using the letter tiles to build words.
The Moveable Alphabet Word Building Folder is a fun and hands-on opportunity for children to apply their letters and sounds knowledge to build and manipulate phonemes in words. It supports their phonemic and phonological awareness.
What You Will Need?
You will need laminating sheets, Velcro hook and loop adhesive tape or dots and one A3 colour card. Full instructions are available with the Moveable Alphabet Word Building Folder Kit.
When setting up your folder, provide children with only the phonemes that they know and have been explicitly taught. You can place all other letter tiles in a zip-lock bag for later use and add new phonemes to the folder once the child has learnt them and is ready to apply them to words.
PLay & Learn – Some Ideas
The Moveable Alphabet Word Building Folder is a fun and hands-on opportunity for children to apply their letters and sounds knowledge to create and manipulate phonemes in words. It supports their phonemic and phonological awareness.
Here are some ideas on how you can use the folder to support early readers and spellers.
Word Building – Phoneme Manipulation
The folder can be used to play games such as Switch It (phoneme manipulation) . I love this game from Reading Simplified!
It is important that children are manipulating sounds that they know and have been explicitly taught.
- Isolate: Identify the beginning, middle and final sounds /i/ /n/. Listen as you segment the sounds /i/ /n/ and then blend them to create the word. What is the word? Sound it and say it.
- Add Sounds: Add sounds to create new words. What word do you make when you add a /ch/ to the beginning of the word in?
- Substitute Sounds: Substitute sounds to create new words. If we change the /n/ in chin and add /ck/. What is the new word?
- Delete Sounds: Remove a sound in a word to make a new word. You can then add new sounds to create a new. Such as, delete /i/ and /ck/ in chick and add /o/ /p/. What is the new word?
Letter Patterns & Spelling Lists
Teach and discuss spelling patterns through curated lists. The Moveable Alphabet Word Building Folder Kit comes with a suggested list of words for all letter patterns (phonemes) shown in the photos.
Word studies using the words with the same phoneme or letter patterns or spelling rules, supports reading and spelling skills. For example, /ng/ is always located at the end of words and a curated word list would include sing, ring, king, thing, rang, sang, etc. Children can use the Moveable Alphabet Folder to build words with /ng/ and substitute sounds to create new words using /ng/.
The Moveable Alphabet Word Building Folder can also be used for small group activities or one-on-one support for students with reading or spelling difficulties. It also makes a great morning activity as students arrive at school to sit with a partner or parent helper.
Home REader Connection
The Moveable Alphabet Word Building Folder may also be used for as part of your homework program, which accompanies a matching word list (dish, wish, cash, Josh, shop fish, rush) and a decodable reader with a phoneme focus of sh words.
- Before reading the decoded reader, ask the child to search for words with the /sh/ phoneme. When a word has been spotted, sound out each phoneme, locate the letters on the Moveable Alphabet Word Building Folder and place them in the elkonin boxes.
- Read the story all the way through, tracking with your finger and sounding out any unknown words.
- After reading, use the elkonin boxes to manipulate the phonemes by building /sh/ words, deleting sounds, adding or changing new sounds. Include non-word when you are manipulating the phonemes and building words.
- Ask questions: what is the beginning, middle or final sound? What word did you make when you deleted the /b/ and added a /w/?
- Locate the letter tiles in words such as w-i-sh and place them on the template. Sound it and say it (track with your finger). What is the beginning, middle and final sounds?
Let’s Learn
Add /c/ to the beginning sound luck to make cluck. Delete /c/ /l/ and add /s/ /t/ to make stuck. Delete /s/ /t/ and add /d/ to make duck. Delete beginning and middle sounds /d/ /u/ and add /qu/ /i/ to make quick. Delete the middle sound /i/ and add /a/ to make quack.
By playing with the Moveable Alphabet, children are mastering some important skills such as:
- The concepts of the alphabetic principle
- Letter-sound knowledge
- Phonemic segmentation and blending
- Phonemic manipulation (substitution, deletion)
- Isolating initial, medial and final sounds
- Decoding and spelling skills.
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