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Developing Phonological Awareness: Phoneme Categorization by Place, Manner, and Voice

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Why teach children to categorize phonemes?

Developing Deeper Phonological Awareness by Categorizing Phonemes

Teaching children how speech sounds are made is a great instructional activity for both the therapy room and the classroom!  Sorting phonemes is a highly effective activity for developing strong phonological awareness skills in young learners. By sorting phonemes based on their place of articulation (where the sound is made), manner of articulation (how the sound is made), and voicing (whether the vocal cords vibrate), children gain a deeper understanding of how sounds are produced.  This can aid early learning as it allows children to make connections and organization of the phonemes.

This knowledge is crucial for:
  • Improved Reading and Spelling: Strong phonological awareness is a foundational skill for reading and spelling. By understanding how sounds are created and how they relate to each other, children can more easily decode words, sound out unfamiliar words, and spell accurately.
    • Why do some "long u" words also have a "y" sound in front?  The process of "yod-dropping", or losing the "y" sound, in American English, generally occurs when the "ū" following an alveolar sound "t,d,n,l,s,z".  Labials or velars have retained the original "yū" pronunciation, as well as words beginning with a "ū".  There are exceptions; however, many of those can be traced back to the origin language, such as "puma", or dialectal differences.
  • Enhanced Speech Clarity: Sorting phonemes helps children become more aware of the subtle differences between sounds, which can improve their speech clarity and articulation.
  • Early Identification of Speech-Sound Disorders: The phoneme sorting activity can help teachers and SLPs identify children who may be experiencing difficulties with speech sound production.
Phonological Awareness Activity: Place, Manner, Voice
I've created a new TPT Easel Activity to help you!  This resource includes 3 phoneme sorting pages, and a full color oral anatomy image, with labels!

Teaching Tips

  • Prior Knowledge: Before introducing phoneme sorting, review letters and their corresponding sounds. Emphasize saying each phoneme in isolation (e.g., /p/ for "p," not "puh").
  • Watch videos of speech sounds, such as G - How to Make G Sound
  • Multi-sensory Learning:
    • Visual: Use mirrors or self-view cameras to allow children to observe their own mouth movements.
    • Kinesthetic: Encourage children to touch their lips, teeth, and tongue as they learn about the different places of articulation.
    • Auditory: repeat the sound multiple times.
    • Tactile: Have children feel the air movement with their hands or light objects (tissues, feathers) when exploring manner of articulation (e.g., stops, fricatives).
  • Modeling: Demonstrate the sorting process yourself, thinking aloud as you categorize sounds.
  • Guided Practice: Go through each sort together as a class, discussing the characteristics of each phoneme.
  • Differentiation: Start with a small set of sounds for younger children or those who are struggling. Gradually increase the complexity.
  • Early Intervention: In early learning classrooms, integrate phoneme sorting with letter and sound instruction, emphasizing how sounds are produced.

Categorizing Phonemes Creates brain connections to aid in learning reading
Extension Activity Ideas:

  • Watch how the mouth works in real-time while someone is speaking! It is constantly making fine-tuned movements to produce recognizable speech.
  • Explore vowel production: Discuss the places of vowel production (front, middle, back) within the oral cavity. While these sounds involve less physical contact with the mouth, understanding their placement is crucial for comprehensive phoneme awareness.
  • Learning how speech is made can aid students in learning phonological awareness skills
    Anatomy of the speech system: In addition to teaching oral anatomy, teach students about the
    anatomy of the entire speech system, from lungs to the nose. This can be effectively integrated into a unit on the respiratory system.
  • Expand Phonemic Awareness: Integrate place, manner, and voicing instruction with other essential phonemic awareness skills such as:
    • Blending: Combining phonemes to form words.
    • Segmenting: Breaking words down into individual phonemes.
    • Rhyming: Identifying and generating rhyming words.
    • Alliteration: Recognizing and producing words that begin with the same sound (not letter)

Connect to Reading & Writing:

  • Introduce the IPA: Introduce the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) or dictionary-style phonetic symbols alongside graphemes (letters) and phonemes. This helps students understand the relationship between sounds and their written representations.
  • Analyze Pronunciation: When breaking down words, discuss the oral movements involved in their production. Explore words with unexpected pronunciations, such as "truck" (often pronounced with a /chr/ sound), "Wednesday," "library" (/laɪbɝi/), "doubt," or "knight".Co-articulation & Assimilation: Explain how sounds influence each other within words. For instance, in "butter," the /t/ sound is often influenced by the surrounding vowels, resulting in a reduced pronunciation (/bʌdɚ/ or /buhder/). Discuss how the voicing of the plural "-s" changes depending on the preceding consonant.
  • Integrate with Other Language Arts:

slps and teachers collaborate on building blocks of reading
Collaboration

Teachers and SLPs can collaborate on this! Consider guest teaching or co-facilitate the activity. Both SLPs and teachers provide valuable insights into student needs and offer specific strategies for addressing individual challenges.

Other resources:

Place Manner Voice Chart | The Speech Guide
Understanding Consonant and Vowel Phonemes in English
Rethinking Spelling Instruction — Reading Rev
Word Mapper - Phonics & Stuff - phoneme to grapheme tool
Teaching Tools - Phonics & Stuff - includes word chain builders, phonemic manipulation tool, and sentence generator. There are games and a worksheet creator on other tabs. Some features require a free account, and others require a subscription.
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Hey there! I'm Mrs. Speech, your friendly SLP. Since 2000, I've been rocking the school scene across three different states, but in 2020, I took the leap into teletherapy, changing lives one click at a time. Oh, and digital materials? Been there, done that since 2013—always on the hunt for niche gems to make learning a blast. With two daughters—one a teen, the other adult—I've mastered the art of juggling. So whether you're a fellow SLP, a teletherapy newbie, or just love cool materials, stick around! Let's make learning fun together!

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