SOUND CITY READING
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    • Level 4. Phonics Patterns Overview >
      • Phonetic Words And Stories, 1-8
      • Basic Phonics Patterns, 1-8
      • Basic Phonics Patterns Lesson Outline
      • Know The Phonetic Code, 1-3
      • Color-Coded Phonetic Lists
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    • Sound Story Part 1
    • Sound Story Part 2
    • Individual Sound Pictures Part 1
    • Individual Sound Pictures Part 2
    • Individual Letter Sounds ABC Order
    • More Letter Sounds - sh, th, ch, wh, ck, tch, ng, oi, oy, ou, ow
    • Sound Pictures And Letters Part 1
    • Learning The Alphabet And Exploring Sounds In Words Charts
    • Level 3 Short Vowel Sound Charts
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7/29/2017

Uploading Sound Story Videos

1 Comment

Read Now
 
I have realized for some time that I need to provide audio recordings and videos for this program.  Many adults have never been exposed to a systematic phonics program.  They may find it difficult to work with the Sound City Reading materials if they have never developed the skills that they would be trying to teach.  Because a phonetic program is strongly based on the sounds in words and the letters and letter patterns that represent those sounds, it's important for teachers, parents, and students to be able to hear those sounds, and to hear how the sounds in words can be taken apart and put back together again.
Picture
I've been working for almost a year now with the Camtasia program to learn how to make screencasts for some of the Sound City Reading books.  I have had good luck with a number of test recordings, but there were always a few glitches that I didn't know how to correct.  Over the past two days I've studied my previous notes, a number of Camtasia video tutorials, and any information I could find online to try to answer the questions I still had.  Victory!  I can now put together a high resolution screen recording that I can share online through Vimeo.  

Unfortunately, my vocal cords are not cooperating!  I have recorded the first pages from A Sound Story About Audrey And Brad, and my voice quality is terrible​​. : ( Nevertheless, with apologies, I'm posting the videos.  At least parents and teachers can watch them and get an idea about how to pronounce the alphabet sounds and present the material.   Perhaps, at some point I can re-record the videos.

If you're not familiar with this sound story, it introduces speech sounds in a story.  Each 
speech sound is represented by a sound that occurs in the story.  Every sound is represented by a picture that could occur in real life.  As far as possible, the pictures are intuitively clear.  For example, some of the sounds include a growling dog, snow crunching under boots, blowing wind, and chains squeaking on a swing set.  Sounds made by people's voices are included: exclamations of surprise (oh!), pain (ow), and satisfaction (mmm).  

Students can have difficulty learning the alphabet letters and their sounds because they are purely symbolic.  There is nothing about the letter T that indicates what the sound for the letter might be.  However, if students are shown a picture of a ticking clock, the /t/ sounds seems reasonable and students are able to make a clear connection between the picture and the sound.  The goal of the sound story is for students to easily learn the sound for each picture, and then relate that sound to the capital and lower case letters that represent that sound.

To me, it can be very confusing for students to learn the alphabet letters because they are truly complicated.  There are capital and lower case forms for each letter.  Some of these look the same, and some look entirely different.  Yes they have the same names and sounds.  For some letters, such as b and d, the sounds are fairly obvious because they are pronounced as part of the letter name.  Other letters are completely disorienting.  The letter H (aich) represents a sound that is totally different from its name.  This is why, in the sound story, students start with the sound picture, and then relate it to the alphabet letter that represents that sound.

 On top of that, letters printed in various fonts can look quite different from the letters that students learn to print.  So I've included two sets of letters with every picture.  The first pair of letters is printed in a "san serif" font, without serifs.  The second set of letters is printed in a font with serifs, which are the small pointed lines that stick out from the basic letters.  I'm hopeful that explaining both types of letters from the very beginning will help students be less baffled but the whole process.

I spent some time a few months ago studying about the development of phonetic languages, just looking for information online.  I found it interesting that the Phoenicians, who adapted a few of the many Egyptian hieroglyphic symbols to create their alphabet, chose letters that were really very simplified  pictures from their everyday life.  Once you learned what object each picture represented, it was easy to remember the sound - it was just the first sound in the word.  Teachers commonly use "key words" to teach alphabet letters, as in a/apple, b/ball, and c/cat.  But the Phoenicians made it even easier because their letters were actually simplified pictures of the key word, making it easier for Phoenician children to learn the alphabet than children who are learning the English alphabet in modern times.  

I used key words to teach the alphabet for years.  Then I began teaching my five year old niece.  I had the alphabet cards on the walls in my living room that I had used for years in my classroom.  But b/ball didn't mean anything to her because she couldn't hear the /b/ sound at the beginning of ball as a separate sound unit.  She just heard the whole word "ball."  I wrote the sound story that I now use for her, writing a new section and drawing a new picture before she arrived for each lesson.  This approach changed everything for her.  She easily learned to recognize the alphabet letters and to remember their sounds after she had learned the sound pictures first.  I later went back to the classroom and used the sound story with groups of first graders for years, with good results.  

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1 Comment
codybecth link
4/19/2022 09:34:16 am

Great article! Awesome content.I Loved this post and I’m definitely pinning it to share!

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    Kathryn J. Davis
    B.S. 1973 Southwestern At Memphis (Rhodes College)
    ​M.A.T 1992 East Tennessee State University

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Sound City Reading

All Materials Copyright 2021 by Kathryn J. Davis, All Rights Reserved
Teachers, parents, tutors, and schools may download and print PDF files to use with the students they teach.  They are not to make a profit from distributing the materials.  
​Teaching videos are free to watch, and they may be downloaded for personal use, at home or in the classroom. 

In special cases I may grant written permission to individuals to use the material in other ways.  

You can contact me at kathjdavis@gmail.com.
  • A Sequential Phonics Program
    • How To Navigate This Site
    • What Happened To The Old Site
    • Can I buy physical copies of the books?
    • How Was This Program Developed?
    • Information About The Author
    • Copyright Information
    • Information About Reading Street
    • How To Use The PDF Files
    • Using A Print Shop
    • Other Recommended Sites
    • How To Get Started
    • Understanding Vowels
    • Understanding Consonants
  • Materials
    • Step Charts
    • Flow Charts
    • Program Overview
    • Overview Of All Of The Phonics Books
    • Level 1
    • Level 1. Learning The Alphabet Overview
    • Level 2. Exploring Sounds In Words Overview
    • Level 3. Short Vowels Overview
    • Level 4. Phonics Patterns Overview >
      • Phonetic Words And Stories, 1-8
      • Basic Phonics Patterns, 1-8
      • Basic Phonics Patterns Lesson Outline
      • Know The Phonetic Code, 1-3
      • Color-Coded Phonetic Lists
  • PDF Files
    • How To Work With PDF Files
    • Baseline Assessment PDF
    • Sequence Charts PDF
    • Sound Story PDF
    • Phonemic Awareness PDF
    • Manuscript Handwriting PDFs
    • Cursive Handwriting PDFs
    • Level 1 - Learning The Alphabet PDFs
    • Level 2 - Exploring Sounds In Words PDFs
    • Level 3 - Short Vowel PDFs
    • Level 4 - Phonics Patterns PDFs
    • Level 5 - Advanced Phonics Patterns PDFs
    • Large Picture-Word Pages PDF
    • Flashcards PDF
    • Wall Charts Newer PDF
    • Wall Charts Older PDF
    • Activities And Games PDF
    • Older PDF Files
  • Pictures
    • Sound Story Pictures
    • Keyword/Sound Chart Pictures
    • Level 1 And 2 Pictures
    • Level 3 Pictures
    • Level 4 Pictures
    • Consonant Blends
    • Level 5 Pictures
  • Audio
    • Sound Story Part 1
    • Sound Story Part 2
    • Individual Sound Pictures Part 1
    • Individual Sound Pictures Part 2
    • Individual Letter Sounds ABC Order
    • More Letter Sounds - sh, th, ch, wh, ck, tch, ng, oi, oy, ou, ow
    • Sound Pictures And Letters Part 1
    • Learning The Alphabet And Exploring Sounds In Words Charts
    • Level 3 Short Vowel Sound Charts
    • Level 3 Advanced Short Vowel Sound Charts
    • Sound Blending - Short U
    • Picture-Word Page Short U
    • Level 4, Book 1 Sound Charts
    • Level 4, Book 2 Sound Charts
  • Video
    • Sound Story Part 1 Videos
    • Robot Game a_e/safe
    • Advanced Sound Charts
  • Reading Street
    • Reading Street Stories
    • Reading Street Tests
    • Spelling Worksheets For Reading Street
    • Decoding Practice Pages To Use With Reading Street
    • Word Cards And Phonogram Cards
  • Blog
    • Contact Me
    • Share Your Experience
    • Take This Expanded Survey