Sound Walls—Science of Reading
This page will teach you about sound walls, which are based on the science of reading. A sound wall is a display or bulletin board built around phonology, in which the different speech sounds, or phonemes, are organized. (Please also see my Word Walls page!)
- A sound wall separates vowels and consonants.
- An articulatory photo (mouth formation photo) represents each phoneme and the various graphemes or words associated with it. For example, long a would have a, a_e, ai, ay, eigh, ey, ei, ea, OR you could use sample words like “bacon,” “bake,” “rain,” “pay,” “sleigh,” “they,” “vein,” or “steak.”
- Using articulatory photographs encourages children to consider the location of articulation—what happens to their teeth, lips, and tongue when they make a sound. Mirrors are helpful!
- As you teach each phoneme and grapheme, you construct the sound wall. IDEA: Have mini sound walls for each reading group, and have the students create their own sound walls! If you buy a sound wall kit, it often comes with blank templates for students. View my suggestion below!
Buy a sound wall kit!
I am an Amazon Affiliate, and I highly recommend this sound wall. It’s all prepared, so you don’t need to spend even more money on color copies!
Here is what I use!
My Nerdy Teacher sound wall, which includes articulation gestures represented by mouth pictures, incorporates different skin tones. It also comes with a real image version for Vowel Valley and Consonant Cave, which I use, or it comes in a clip art version. You get both! You can either put a word example or the graphemes under each heading as you teach them. I use the graphemes. This is what it looks like!
I had Best Value Copy print them out for me on 8.5×11 “100# Coated Silk Cover paper.” The shipping is a little expensive, but the quality is excellent, and the turnaround time is super fast. The paper is so sturdy, you won’t need to laminate it. I specified to BVC the page numbers I wanted printed. Again, you choose between the real image or the clip art version.
Move Mountains Lit on Etsy has GREAT sound wall mini versions for students. I use these. Students create their own sound walls as each grapheme is taught. Sound Walls—Science of Reading
Listen, practice, and master all the sounds!
Start by reading this page and watching these videos!
Vowels carry the voice and tune of a word” (Hill for Literacy, 2022). An idea from Moats (2000) is to create words using the same two consonants to demonstrate the changes in the vowel sounds. For example, use b/t:
- beet
- bit
- bait
- bet
- bat
- bite
- bottle
- but
- bought
- boat
- book
- boot
- Bart
- Bert
You can purchase these bulletin board examples from Mrs. Winter’s Bliss. The first is a basic version that uses word examples instead of the graphemes. The second uses graphemes. Sound Walls—Science of Reading
Consonant Place and Manner of Articulation
Stops: Consonants that are created by restricting airflow and then releasing a puff of air.
- p, b (lips)
- t,d (ridge/teeth)
- k, g (back of throat) Sound Walls—Science of Reading
Fricatives: Made by forcing air through a narrowed air passage, causing mouth friction.
- f, v (teeth/lips)
- th – 2 sounds (tongue/teeth)
- s, z (ridge/teeth)
- sh, zh (roof mouth)
Affricates: Sound produced by the sequence of a stop followed by a fricative.
- ch (roof mouth)
- j (roof mouth)
Nasals: The mouth is closed, forcing breath through the nose.
- m (lips)
- n (tongue/teeth)
- ng (back of throat)
Liquids: Formed by interrupting the airflow but without friction.
- r (roof mouth)
- l (ridge/teeth)
Glides: Formed in a similar way to vowels.
- y (roof mouth)
- w (back of throat)
- h (glottis)
Vocal cords vibrate to produce voiced consonants, and they do not vibrate to produce unvoiced ones.
Sound walls are INCREDIBLY helpful! Consider a standard word wall—the word the would be placed under the letter t. The does not begin with the phoneme /t/, but with the unvoiced /th/. Similarly, the word she starts with the phoneme /sh/ rather than the phoneme /s/. When we attempt to teach students to decode words based on phonemes, it often confuses them (Why Teachers Are Adopting Sound Walls Over Word Walls | Teach Starter).
10/26/2025
