Objective

• To actively engage students in listening for the phonemes in a word by personally behaving like letters.

Resources

• Picture Code Cards (PCCs)
• A Reading Direction Sign is helpful

Explanation for students

I have given Picture Code Cards to some of you so that you can be the Letterlanders. The rest of us are going to help listen for your sounds in words. Then together we can decide which Letterlanders we need to spell the words. We call it Live Spelling.

When to use

• Learning to segment Live Spelling is used early on to help students develop the ability to pull a spoken word apart to isolate the individual sounds. By pretending to be the characters and making their sounds, they feel a personal involvement in this otherwise strange and abstract process.

Variations

• Segmenting Leader Use a Segmenting Leader often to maintain children’s engagement and build confidence. This will also allow you to see individual children’s progress in the vital phonemic awareness skill of segmentation.
• Costumes or props, while not essential, it can be very helpful in drawing the students into an activity that may be quite challenging at first. Using a few props and a bit of action for new digraphs or other word elements, can enhance children’s enjoyment and strengthen their memories.

More Support

• At first, when students are just learning to segment, stretch the whole word and then start to stretch it again to get the initial sound. Then ask the student with the PCC to stand in the first position to start the word. Then stretch the word again for the second sound, ask the next student to stand next to the first. Finally stretch the word again for the final sound.
• Later, when students are more skilled at segmenting, they can segment out all the sounds first, and then decide who is needed in the word.

What to Watch for

Observe students to make sure everyone is participating and using the appropriate multisensory strategy (Rubber Band Trick, Finger Tapping, and/or Palming the Syllables). To keep everyone mentally involved, try this: Students segment the word as usual, but then everyone whispers to a neighbor the spelling of the word or syllable. Next students who think their letter is in the word come forward to form the word. The ‘audience’ then blends the sounds and decides if they think the word is spelled correctly or if it needs some corrections.

To become a competent reader and speller, students must become very efficient at segmenting a word into its phonemes.1 Word building activities involving segmenting provide opportunities for teachers to model this essential skill and for students to practice it.2 Segmenting and matching letters or digraphs to the sounds allows the sounds and spellings to become ‘glued’ together. Applying this process in text is how students attain sight word knowledge that enable them to eventually read most words automatically.3 This ability allows them to concentrate on the meaning of what they read. Live Spelling is a whole class segmenting and spelling activity that allows teachers to present words with new phonic patterns to all the students at once. Other segmenting and spelling activities should be used in small groups especially for students who need instruction and practice focused on fully attaining these skills.3 Letterland teaching includes these small group segmenting activities: Segmenting with Picture Code Cards (or Letter Sound Cards), Spelling with Magnetic Word Builders (or on Phonics Online), Chalkboard/Whiteboard Spelling, and Spelling Boxes. 

1 Ehri, 2009; Gillon, 2018; Kilpartrick, 2015; Juel, 1988.
2 Beck & Beck, 2013; International Literacy Association, 2019; Ehri, 2009.
3 Ehri, 2009; Gillon, 2018.