Using Sound Walls to Support Spelling Skills for Students with Learning Disabilities

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Written by Christina Novelli, M.Ed., Doctoral Student, Department of Communication Sciences and Special Education, University of Georgia

Becoming literate, that is, possessing the ability to comprehend and produce messages in written text, is a primary purpose of formal schooling (Houghton & Zorzi, 2003). Proficient reading and writing skills are linked with positive school, work, and social life outcomes (Berman, 2009; DeWalt & Hink, 2009). Reading and writing are language-based behaviours, but unlike oral language development, reading and writing do not develop naturally (Moats, 2020). To learn the skills necessary to complete both tasks, students must learn to decode and encode units in English orthography.

English orthography is fundamentally—albeit not purely—alphabetic (Venezky, 1999). An alphabetic orthography (e.g., Hebrew) describes a system of written symbols (i.e., graphemes = letters or letter combinations) that represent individual phonemes (i.e., speech sounds). Understanding the alphabetic principle provides foundational knowledge for the structure of English. The alphabetic principle is comprised of two parts: (a) alphabetic understanding—knowing that words are made up of graphemes that represent phonemes and (b) phonological recoding—knowing how to translate the graphemes into their corresponding phonemes (Baker et al., 2018). In reading and writing development theories, phoneme-grapheme (encoding) and grapheme-phoneme (decoding) correspondences are underlying foundational skills (Kim, 2017; Kim & Schatschneider, 2017; Perfetti, 1992).

Early learners need to learn the basic connections between phonemes and graphemes and between graphemes and phonemes. Beginning readers see an unknown word (e.g., <clap>), break it up into parts, and use their knowledge of grapheme-phoneme correspondences to sound out the word (e.g., /k/ /l/ /æ/ /p/). Once readers pronounce the word, they use their semantic (i.e., meaning) system to comprehend it. As students become more proficient readers, they depend less on phonological processes because they have stored the word-specific representations in long-term memory. Conversely, beginning spellers translate sounds to print—they hear a spoken word (e.g., clap) and break it into parts (e.g., /k/ /l/ /æ/ /p/). Then they use their knowledge of phoneme-grapheme correspondences, letter formation, semantics, and fine motor skills to create the word's written form (McCloskey & Rapp, 2017). Much like reading, as students become more proficient spellers, spelling known words becomes automatic as the representations are stored in long-term memory (Ehri, 2005). Students with dyslexia experience more difficulties developing the automaticity of the connections necessary for fluent reading and spelling (Shaywitz et al., 2002). These students have difficulty hearing and manipulating the sounds of language, which is necessary for converting print-to-speech or speech-to-print.

Although reading and spelling share similar processing structures, spelling is more difficult because spellings represent all three linguistic structures (i.e., phonology, orthography, morphology). Since English is a morphophonemic system, the graphemes represent sound and mark the language's graphemic, syntactic, and morphemic features (Nunes & Bryant, 2006; Venezky, 1999). Spelling relies not only on basic phoneme-grapheme correspondences but also on context-sensitive rules. For example, the letter <c> is used to spell the sound /s/ when followed by an <e>, <i>, or <y>). Additionally, English spelling is composed of Greek, Latin, Anglo-Saxon, and Norman French elements and is therefore considered a deep orthography. Spelling has evolved to represent sound and meaning (Moats, 2020). For example, <bubble> is spelled with a doubled consonant to ensure the vowel sound is short, and this doubling pattern preserves a sound element. Spelling also can convey meaning in words. For example, in the word <helped>, the past-tense suffix <ed> is pronounced /t/; however, the suffix holds its spelling to reflect the meaning indicating the action already happened. If the word were spelled simply to preserve the sound element, it would be spelled <helpt>. Knowledge of all three linguistic structures and their interactions, or connections, is paramount to successful reading and writing development.

Sound Walls are Tools to Support Connections

When instruction is well-designed and strategic, learning for all students improves. A high-leverage practice for students with disabilities is to provide scaffolded supports (McLeskey et al., 2017). These include visual, verbal, and written supports, which are intended to temporarily support students to successfully engage in behaviours they may not have full mastery of yet. A sound wall is a visual scaffold to help students solidify their knowledge of phoneme-grapheme correspondences. In their synthesis of spelling interventions, Galuschka et al. (2020) found spelling interventions that included phonics training, explicit instruction of spelling rules, and morphological instruction were particularly effective. Sound walls support the first two components needed by providing a visual support to students to strengthen their knowledge of phonics and spelling patterns.

Click here to view and download Consonant Sound Wall Information. 

Click here to view and download Vowel Sound Wall Information.

Using Sound Walls in Coordination with Intervention

Although sound walls can support all students, they may be especially important tools for students with dyslexia. Reading and spelling interventions conducted in a one-on-one or small group setting are effective for students with learning disabilities (Galuschka et al., 2020). Sound walls can be incorporated into small-group instruction. Students can have a personal reference copy by using a file folder and displaying each sound wall on an inside flap. The teacher can choose for these individualized sound walls to be constructed after instruction or revealed during instruction. Students can write in the graphemes as they learn additional spellings or can highlight learned graphemes on a completed sound wall.

It is important for educators to use data to determine an appropriate entry point in the scope and sequence. This can be done through diagnostic assessments using criterion-referenced tests (e.g., Gallistel-Ellis Test of Coding Skills; Gallistel, 2005) or teacher-made mastery measurement assessments of foundational reading and spelling skills (e.g., reading and spelling of taught sounds). These data and information from the student’s individual education plan will point to a place to begin in the scope and sequence. Small-group instruction, like whole-group instruction, will be explicit and systematic and follow explicit instruction (see Table 1 for example script).

Table 1

Introducing a New Phoneme and Its Most Common Spelling

In addition, formative assessment can guide instructional decision-making (move on or re-teach). One practice is to incorporate a daily spelling check after each intervention session. Words used for the daily check need to reflect previously and recently taught phoneme-grapheme correspondences. For the check, the teacher dictates five sounds, and the student(s) write all known spellings without the assistance of their sound wall. This is to monitor independent mastery of the spellings. For students progressing in orthographic learning, the dictation may switch from sounds to words (i.e., the teacher dictates words encompassing the different spelling rules learned). The check procedure follows the following script for each sound.

T: “The sound is /sound/. What sound?”

S: Imitate sound.

T: “Spell /sound/. We know XX spellings so far.”

S: Write learned graphemes.

There is no corrective feedback during the spell check as it is a formative assessment, but general praise for staying on-task and completing the sound check should be provided. Additionally, teachers can have students practice self-monitoring by actively scoring their checks using their personal sound walls.

Summary

Sound walls are scaffolds that pair phonological and orthographic information to support students’ speech-to-print connections. Awareness of articulatory gestures—what the mouth looks like during phoneme production—enables students to connect to the motor movements of phonemes to graphemes. By incorporating sound walls within intervention, teachers increase the likelihood of students successfully applying speech-to-print connections while writing.

About the Author:

Christina Novelli is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in special education at the University of Georgia. She is also a National Center for Leadership in Intensive Intervention scholar. Her research interests include the intersection of quality reading, spelling, and writing assessment and instruction, particularly for students with or at risk for word-level reading disabilities. Additionally, Christina is interested in the continued application of the principles of applied behaviour analysis to academic intervention and data-based decision-making.

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