Getting to Know the Voiced and Unvoiced Phonemes

In English, we have voiced and unvoiced sounds. A voiced sound elicits vibration of the vocal cords. Unvoiced sounds do not. Instead, there is only air.

WHY IT MATTERS

Understanding the difference between voiced and unvoiced sounds can be especially helpful in identifying and differentiating between phoneme pairs that share the same mouth position but have different sounds when the voice is either turned on or turned off. For example, the sounds /b/ and /p/ are pairs; however, while /b/ is voiced, /p/ is not.

WHICH PHONEMES ARE VOICED, AND WHICH ARE UNVOICED?

All vowel sounds are voiced.

The consonant phonemes, on the other hand, fall into different categories: stops, affricates, nasals, fricatives, liquids, and glides. Many phonemes are pairs that have the same mouth position but differ in that one is unvoiced while the other is voiced.

The STOPS include these unvoiced/ voiced pairs:

  • /p/ and /b/ as in pig and bus

  • /t/ and /d/ as in top and dog

  • /k/ and /g/ as in cat and gate

The AFFRICATES include this unvoiced/ voiced pair:

  • /ch/ and /j/ as in chair and jam

The FRICATIVES include these unvoiced/ voiced pairs:

  • /f/ and /v/ as in fan and van

  • /th/ and /TH/ as in thumb and feather

  • /sh/ and /zh/ as in share and treasure

  • /s/ and /z/ as in sun and zip

  • /h/ (this phoneme has no pair, and is unvoiced) as in hat

The NASALS include all voiced phonemes:

  • /m/ as in map

  • /n/ as in net

  • /ng/ as in ring

The LIQUIDS include two voiced phonemes:

  • /r/ as in rain

  • /l/ as in lock

The GLIDES include this unvoiced/ voiced pair:

  • /wh/ and /w/ as in whale and /wind/ AND

  • /y/ (an unpaired voiced phoneme) as in yarn

HOW TO TEACH STUDENTS TO TELL THE DIFFERENCE

One of the best ways to teach the differences between unvoiced and voiced phonemes is by doing the “voice box check” trick. Take the phonemes /s/ and /z/ phonemes. /s/ is unvoiced. If you put your hand gently on your throat where the voice box is, and say the voiceless /s/ sound, there will be no vibration, just air. Try this again but with the voiced /z/ sound. There will be a noticeable vibration from the vocal cords. Give it a try and watch the kids get really into discovering the voiced and unvoiced phonemes!

The Power of Mnemonic Devices

A few years ago I was taking my kids to a local sports center for swim lessons. Admittedly, I don’t have the best sense of direction (the GPS, in my opinion, is one of the best inventions EVER). To get to this place, I needed to make a turn off of a busy (5-lane) main road onto another road. The turn happened at one of three gas stations clustered near one another along that road, but I needed to be ready and signal to get into the left turning lane so I wouldn’t miss the turn. Initially, I kept forgetting at which gas station that turn happened.

Mnemonic device to the rescue!

The gas station that I needed to turn at was a Shell station. A ha! Shells are by the water (ok, the beach – but still, the water). The pool is the water where the kids swim. This was my mnemonic device. Of course when I finally told my husband, he couldn’t stop laughing. Who cares? As I tell my students, if it works for you, THAT’S what matters.

Mnemonic devices are a fantastic way to remember important information, whether for everyday life (getting your kids to swim!) or for academic purposes. They are powerful tools — or tricks — that help you to recall or remind yourself of information with greater facility. They are especially beneficial for students with learning disabilities or working memory and other executive functioning challenges, but can and SHOULD be used to support every student’s learning. They encourage deeper engagement with the learning material and improved long-term memory of the content. And let’s face it, mnemonic devices can also be quite fun.

The top five way to incorporate mnemonic devices into daily life include:

  1. Rhymes

  2. Visualizations

  3. Acronyms

  4. Associations

  5. Short stories

If you love new mnemonic devices as much as I do as a way to help your students (or even yourself!) remember certain literacy-related content, hop on over to my Instagram page where I will be periodically sharing ideas in my stories.

What are some of your best mnemonic devices?

The Power of Pictures in Picture Books

After sending out my last newsletter discussing the flaws of the 3 cueing system and how to implement change, I received a number  of emails asking about the role of pictures. Aren’t they important? How are they important? How can they bring meaning to the text?

Pictures should never be used to guess a word. That’s what explicit phonics instruction is for. But pictures have the ability to support reading in other powerful ways. In this post, I’m going to discuss three ways pictures are a powerful part of the reading experience.

  1. Pictures enhance comprehension. Once a word is decoded, the picture can elevate the meaning of the word. In my last newsletter I wrote about a student who couldn’t figure out the word “ferry” in a leveled reader because a) he didn’t have the phonics knowledge to do so, and b) had never been exposed to that word before, so looking at the picture didn’t even help him. Once he was given the tools to efficiently decode the word, he was able to use the picture of the ferry in the text to gain a better idea of this word’s meaning. In addition to supporting vocabulary comprehension, pictures can support other areas of comprehension, such as visualizing the story’s flow and plot structure, better understanding a character’s emotional states and reactions, and referencing inferences and predictions.

  2. Pictures add to the storyline. In some stories, pictures provide clues and information that aren’t in the text. They may show another perspective that isn’t narrated. They act as hidden features that add to the storyline.

  3. Pictures tap into readers’ imaginations. Detailed illustrations allow readers’ minds to roam — to wonder and wander, and to wish. They invite readers to exercise their imaginations. They encourage readers to ask questions that they might not have had without the visual images, and explore places they never could have imagined before.

  4. Pictures evoke emotional connections, responses, and reactions. Have you ever been pulled in by the illustrations of a book, or experienced an emotional reaction or response because of its pictures? Pictures can add a certain mood to the story.

Readers should be encouraged to interpret the pictures alongside the text - to examine, observe, notice, and question — to use the pictures as a tool to deepen their understanding and experience of the story and its characters. Next time you are introducing a reader to a picture book, make sure to save extra time for exploring the role of the pictures. Here are a few topics to discuss when reflecting on the role of pictures in books.

  • Patterns or common themes incorporated by the illustrator

  • New information that is represented in the pictures that is not conveyed in the writing

  • How the reading of the book might have been different without the pictures - would you have missed out on important information offered only through the visual component?

  • The ways in which the pictures help bring deeper understanding of the elements of the story: characters, setting, plot, etc…

  • Emotional responses or moods drawn out by the pictures

What are some of your favorite picture books, and how do their illustrations enhance the story?

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