Words for Phoneme Segmentation Practice
These words are to be presented orally to the student for practice segmenting the word into each individual phoneme. Since these words are to be presented only orally, the spelling is not relevant. However, students who know the spelling of some words may be confused by differences between the number of letters and the sounds and will need lots of practice and modeling to focus on the sounds rather than the letters. To avoid confusion, start with words that are spelled with the same number of letters as sounds and then move to words with more letters than sounds.
Two-phoneme words:
Long vowels: hi, my, pie, he, me, we, so, go, no, tie, guy, she, tea, bee, see, hoe, low, show, toe, zoo, shoe, day, hay, jay, may, pay, ray, say, way, ace, ape, eat, each, oat, oak.
Short vowels: at, am, it, if, up, us, an, is, Ed, ick, ash, odd, itch, ill, edge
Three-phoneme words:
Short vowels (spelled with same number of letters as sounds): pat, bat, pig, pop, pot, map, mat, mop, tub, cap, cat, cup, cut, net, nut, dig, dot, pan, mom, can, gun, hit, big, hut, fat, fan, rag, fin, run, rug, web, wet, sun, gum.
Short vowels (more letters than sounds): back, rock, miss, ship, shut, shop, shot, sick, sock, lick, back, rack, tack, lack, shock.
Long vowels: bike, make, mouse, beef, tape, boat, bake, bone, cake, coat, kite, note, dime, duck, game, gate, goat, lake, light, feet, sheep, shine, seal, seat, sign, beach, made, same, safe, teeth, heat, soak, toes, like, moon, moose.
Note: Before giving any word to the student for segmenting, make sure you can easily segment the word (some sounds are very difficult to segment). Also make the student pronounce the word after you so that you are sure he/she is pronouncing it correctly. Avoid words with regional pronunciations! To be safe, stick with the lists above and, if using other lists, scrutinize them carefully. Word lists in commercial packages sometimes contain poor examples or examples that don’t work in a particular part of the country.