Many teachers are interested in using Sound Walls instead of Word Walls. The more traditional word wall is organized alphabetically using all 26 letters of the alphabet. We place “sight words” or “high-frequency words” under each letter based on the first letter of each word. Working with word walls is print to speech. We find the print/letter first and then we match the sound. Our language develops from speech to print. We hear speech sounds before we learn to match the sounds to a particular letter or letter pattern. So, in the early grades, a Sound Wall makes more sense.
Everything you need to explore the idea of Sound Walls is located in
this blog post. The post shares the work of Mary Ellis Dahlgren, Ed.D., president of Tools 4 Reading. She is an experienced educator with more than 25 years in the field of education having served as a dyslexia therapist, elementary classroom teacher, international literacy consultant, and author. You can order her resources at
Tools 4 Reading.
