In this episode, teacher Christina Winter, better known as Mrs. Winters Bliss on Instagram, talks about the practical application of sound walls in the classroom. She provides her top 3 tips and shares how sound walls can be used in instruction. She also provides ideas for how students can interact with sound walls, such as through dictation, chants, and games.
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Helping teachers learn about science of reading, knowledge building, and high quality curriculum.
In this episode, teacher Christina Winter, better known as Mrs. Winters Bliss on Instagram, talks about the practical application of sound walls in the classroom. She provides her top 3 tips and shares how sound walls can be used in instruction. She also provides ideas for how students can interact with sound walls, such as through dictation, chants, and games.
Takeaways
Resources
We wrote a book! The Literacy 50-A Q&A Handbook for Teachers: Real-World Answers to Questions About Reading That Keep You Up at Night
Don't miss an episode! Sign up for FREE bonus resources and episode alerts at LiteracyPodcast.com
Helping teachers learn about science of reading, knowledge building, and high quality curriculum.
You're listening to. Melissa and Lori Love Literacy. Do you have a sound wall in your classroom? How can sound wall support students in learning letter sounds and spellings? Today we'll be talking to Christina Winter you might know her as Mrs Winter's Bliss on Instagram about how she strategically uses a sound wall in her classroom. This episode is full of practical teacher tips you won't want to miss. Hi teacher friends. I'm Lori and I'm Melissa. We are two educators who won the best for all kids, and we know you do too.
Melissa:We worked together in Baltimore when the district adopted a new literacy curriculum.
Lori:We realized there was so much more to learn about how to teach reading and writing.
Melissa:Lori, and I can't wait to keep learning with you today.
Lori:Hi everyone. Welcome to Melissa and Lori Love Literacy. We can't wait to talk to a fabulous teacher today. We're really excited because in a previous episode we talked with an expert Mary Dolgren about sound walls, and today we're going to do a deep dive into real practical application of sound walls.
Melissa:Yeah, so we're here with Christina Winter, who taught first grade for over 20 years, but you might know her from Instagram or her website, mrs Winter's Bliss. That's where we know her from, so she'll give us all of her teacher tips today. Welcome to the podcast, christina.
Christina Winter:Oh, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited.
Lori:Yeah, it was so nice to meet you in person at the reading league and conference this past year and it was really funny because we were walking by your table and Melissa's like oh, we know her, and I was like how do we know her? I'm like she looks so familiar. She's like Instagram, instagram. So felt like we were meeting an Instagram celebrity.
Christina Winter:Oh my gosh that's how I shout. I mean, I was like can I get your autograph?
Lori:We still owe you scrunchies, though, so we will be sure to get those in the mail to you.
Christina Winter:I was like for them, I was like for them.
Lori:But I'm really excited that you are talking with us about sound walls today, because you make it so easy for teachers to understand how sound walls work and really to just try to use them in classrooms. And that's something we talked about a bit with our previous guest expert, mary Dogran, is, you know, there's this amount of knowledge we need in order to be able to use sound walls, but there's also this idea of we have to just get started and just try it out. Right, and I know one thing that is important about sound walls is that we want to make them a living, breathing thing. We don't want them to be wallpaper. Wallpaper is a thing of the past. In classrooms, we don't want everything to have a purpose and, for the most part, and students do need to interact with these sound walls. So you know, I think you're you're sharing some practical tips today is going to be really exciting.
Christina Winter:Yes, yes, yes. No wallpaper. Everything in our classrooms need to have function and intention, because we know that we have a really big job to do to help our students with their literacy skills. No wallpaper. And yes, if you're a teacher who is feeling a little bit overwhelmed because sound walls are so different, just take little bites, like take little bites, and honestly, lots of teachers in my community are telling me that they're learning right alongside their students and that's like awesome, you can do that. So take little bites and just start and get started and you could do it, yeah.
Melissa:And you are about to tell them some ways they can do it. So we're so excited. You told us that you're going to walk us through some ways that teachers can use them in their instruction, and ways that students can use them probably throughout their whole school day, depending on what's what's going on during the day. So we can't wait to hear and we'll start with the teachers right so telling us about how can teachers use this in their instruction, use a sound wall.
Christina Winter:Yes, so honestly, like a teacher would be using their sound wall during their direct instruction. So while you're getting ready to introduce a new phoneme and thinking about like kindergarten and first grade, as you are introducing a new phoneme, you're being really explicit in your instruction. We're gonna start with the sound and then we're gonna talk about the print with our students and so one of the things that's really fun and I'll hold this up. So hopefully your friends will go to YouTube and look. But this is a skeleton key. It's, you know, about a foot long and I know it's so cool because, as kindergarten, first, second grade teachers, we're like we have to amp it up, make them engage. They, you know we have heavy work to do, but if we keep them engaged, they are gonna work hard right? So this is a tiny little engagement key. You don't have to use something fancy like this. I got an Amazon eight bucks, but you could. You know you could use any kind of key. Put this on your desk, tell your friends hey, joey, we're gonna unlock a new sound. Go get the key, you know, and Joey brings it over and make it really, really exciting. But you know we're we're using the sound wall as we are introducing that new sound. So, for example, and I'll just hold up this little sound card, like, you're introducing the sound, the Sound, the for the letter F right, and so you're gonna tell your students, listen what this, we're gonna talk about the sound and we're going to make the sound, talk about the articulation of the sound, all of that. And then you're gonna unlock and, like, show them the graphings, talk about what they see. Now you might choose, because the letter, the sound of F Right, has more than one way to spell the sound. So you might even cover some of the graphene or the letters that make that sound, depending on what grade you are, where you are in your scope and sequence. But you just really want to be explicit and this is giving that placeholder for your students and you're using this as your reference while you're teaching. So students are making that connection right.
Christina Winter:And then also, when you see students who are taking making articulation areas, whether in their speech or In their writing, then your sound wall is a place that you can go and you can talk about. You know, usually it's a mistake with the pair and you would talk about the mistake and what is happening in your mouth so that you can help your students to create the correct Articulation. You know how many times our students say with, with the F sound at the ending and it's with. So we could practice it with our students. We go to our sound while we show them. Then we could talk about like, compare and contrast what is happening in our mouth when we say those different sounds. But yes, just having a place for us as a community in our classrooms to reference like this is what the sound is and this is how we spell those sounds.
Lori:I Love that as clarification, for I mean also obviously direct instruction. To me that's the obvious one, but the clarification for confusion so helpful, both auditory and written, I think you. You know the writing shows what's happening inside students, what's invisible inside students heads, and that's really helpful too. So if you don't catch it in there, our tick you can catch it as they're writing and that's such a good point right.
Christina Winter:And you know another thing about your sound wall is that you're going to have like the sound spelling cards, are going to have Like all the different ways that you spell, the different the sound.
Christina Winter:So, for example, this is the long a like sale, right. So we have a and that is the most frequent spelling pattern. 45% of words that have the long a have the spelling with just a, the open syllable, like baby right or a friend, and then 35% of words have the a with the sign silent e and on and on. So kids need this as a tool, your students who are just learning the code. They actually need this tool as a scaffold of support to know oh, when I hear a at the end of the word, I'm going to spell it with a y, but when I hear a and it's not at the end of the word, at the beginning or the middle, I'm going to spell it like a. I like in the word pale, right. So we have to provide them those scaffolds of support to look, unlock the code, and that's what it's so helpful During our direct instruction. So we're using it like for spelling, but then also for the articulation piece, and then that obviously transfers into our reading.
Melissa:I'm curious, christina, about I'm looking at your sound while behind you and what you showed us and you have post-it notes Covering those graph themes. Is there a reason it's post-it notes and you don't just, I don't know, not have them and add it as you go? Is there a significance to the Post-it notes?
Christina Winter:Well, I think Post-it notes are easy. Like, for example, there are three ways to spell the F, sound the F what we think of as a fish, but pH also, and then double F, like at the end of a short vowel word. So I cover it because as you're introducing it, if you're introducing to a kindergartner, you're not going to teach them all the spelling patterns, right. So you're going to want to like cover it. And then it's exciting also you get to reveal the new graph means for your students. Good question.
Lori:Yeah, that's helpful. I like that. I think, melissa, what you're getting at is, is there like, is it more beneficial to leave them all up or, like, put them up as you're learning? But I think I like, for the ease of use, I would put them all up and then reveal, because that's what would be the easiest for me to not have to remember where the cards are Logistically.
Melissa:That means it's there, right? So if you come across the word phone, right, but you haven't taught that pH yet, it's there, so you could do a sneak. Oh look at this, it's right here, right? So it's not like you have to go find the pH and where's the pH, you know, but it's just right there under the Post-it and you can just do a little sneak peek.
Christina Winter:Right and actually as teachers like here's a perfect example. We have the uh sound and like, look, but that's not like a sound pattern that we teach until like the late part in first grade. So if we didn't have the sound card up then we would never have the opportunity to like bring our students Not that we're actually asking them to master it but we can identify it, we can talk about it, we can show it and then later in the year we can like explicitly teach it and practice it with our students. So good question yeah, I always tell teachers put it all up and then just cover the on top parts.
Lori:Yeah, this is so much. Uh, Christina, you're sounding, You're giving very sound advice. Mary Dogren mentioned a couple of these things on on her podcast and it's nice to be able to go deeper into it at like a very practical level. So thank you. Yeah, I'm wondering is it a good time to turn to students, to think about students and how I mean? Obviously, we know teachers can use sound walls in the two ways you mentioned. So placeholder for direct instruction, clarification for confusion. And again, we're keeping these episodes really short and sweet, so we asked Christina to be like give us some really practical things. I'm sure there are other ways we can use them, but we're just really pointing out some really brief practical ways to use them. So, thinking about our students, do you want to share how students might be able to use them? And I know you're probably going to show some more fun things along the way.
Christina Winter:Yeah, so, um, in my classroom I did not have a sound wall because I didn't know about sound walls, but we did have like sound spelling cards from our curriculum and, um, so, during dictation, when I did like towards the end of the week kind of not a test but like a little bit of an assessment after what I had taught, I would dictate sounds to my students and so I would say E and my students would say E, and then that would prompt them. It was like a routine that we had to learn. They would raise their hand and say, mrs Winter, what kind of E? And then I would show you know, we would look at and I'm going to hold up here, um, our folders. We have little like sound spelling folders, but you could take these, uh, you could have your sound wall, you could print it out as like a reference for your students, or some teachers I've seen have it like um printed back to back and they have it like on a table tent rate for them. So it's like accessible all the time at their table anywhere in the classroom.
Christina Winter:Yeah, and so when I would say E, then I would tell them or I'd prompt them. Well, this is the vowel team E and the vowels are the same and so like. And then I would like, so they could look at their sound spelling chart and they could remember. And then I would say out some words like this is like in the word B or C, you know, kind of thing. But paying attention to the spelling pattern and talking about the spelling of different words, you could again go back to this is the most popular way that we spell the A, or this A has a vowel. But this word in the word tame, we don't hear that silent E at the end of the word.
Christina Winter:But just getting kids to really interact and be like, use their sound well as a tool, because the more we get them to like, interact with it as a tool, the more they're going to do it independently, right? So even when I'm teaching, if we think back about again director instruction, again, lots of like teacher, think aloud, like what I'm thinking in my brain, go to my sound wall, look at my sound wall. Oh, you know, like if I said A, my students would be like A and they would be like what kind of A I'd be like? Well, this is the kind of A we spell at the end of the word. And so, again, my students like cementing that learning that they have already done right, and then that assessment piece that I can know, like, do they understand or do we need more practice with this? So dictation for sure is a good way.
Christina Winter:Chants are a really good way. I know I've seen on YouTube there's teachers who've come up with these creative lyrics where they like go through the different categories, the fricatives, the stops, the liquids, the vowels. They go through and they chant them as the warmup. So that would be like something that the students are actually doing. You could have students lead it.
Melissa:We actually have an example of that on our YouTube channel from Kristen Poppins. Yeah, she's doing the vowels with her students.
Christina Winter:And then, obviously, after you've taught it and your students, you're like releasing responsibility to students. You want to like put some things in centers for them to do in their independent centers, just again to get them to, you know, be with the sound wall and be interacting with the sound wall. So here are a few ideas. I have four ideas. First of all, four you could teach them. Now obviously you're going to teach, model and practice all the routines to make this so they're independent and on task. But you could teach them like how to do I spy. So with a partner they could do something like I'm thinking about a sound that's a nasal and it's made with your lips together. So your partner is going to say, hmm, right, so they're going to like, do kind of like some I spy questions.
Christina Winter:That would probably be for the end of first grade, maybe second grade. That's kind of really difficult for really young learners. Right, you could do gestures. So I have taken, like these sound wall cards and you can print out the little mouth pictures, articulation, gesture pictures, and the kids could look at the picture and they could say the sound, but not saying it. So then they're like, and then the other friend has to, you know, say are you saying are you saying a hey, okay, I says two sounds, you know so yeah, so they're making the sound and the kids would look at the mouth, what is happening.
Christina Winter:Some are a little more difficult than others, but they could, you know, practice doing that. And then a third thing we could do go fish. So again, print your sound caller, sound spelling cards smaller, and your kids could, you know, like, look at these cards. And they could look at the picture and they could say I, you know, I want the sound card E. And then the other friend would say either here's your card or go fish. Right, again, they're just like playing go fish with the sound spelling card.
Melissa:It's really cool. I feel like my little one really got numbers down when we played go fish, so it makes a lot of sense.
Christina Winter:Yeah, they love it, they like eat this up. The kids love it right, and they're practicing. And then, finally, we could do something like even just like memory, and you would teach your students, like, as you flip the cards over, say the sound right, and then, if you have a match, you say the sound and you get a match, it right. So those are just a few little games that students could play during center time. But, again, we want our sound wall to be like this, like place, like this thing that's like living, breathing, interacting, like scaffold of support that our students are continually using and going back to all the time to help them.
Melissa:Real quick clarification on that. Christina, those last two that you did with the matching and the go fish, those cards they didn't have the mouth pictures, right? They have an example, is that right? Can you? Can you share some like it? What's on the pictures? For people that are just listening?
Christina Winter:Oh, okay, so these are the sound spelling cards and that's like your anchor picture. So for on the the eh, we have the picture of a desk edge, because that's like a true, true sound. We don't want to use elephant because elephant, you hear that little sound right. So edge and echo, those are the words that are more appropriate to use. So you have the picture and then you have the sound, the spelling of those. That's helpful.
Melissa:I saw that one quickly and I was like what's the table? I was like, who sound? Is that one Maybe?
Christina Winter:octopus might be a little bit better, right? Yeah, I did. Yeah, and I just see just the other day another teacher had an idea that I hadn't thought of yet that she had where her students at a center were matching the mouth articulation picture and the sound spelling cards together, like just matching those at a center independently. So that's another fun idea for them to do.
Lori:Yeah, and just to kind of double click on something that you said, or two things that you said. First is that the students are saying the sound, saying it, and that they are making sure that they that you've already taught it's. This is not new, nothing's new. This is review, review, review and practice, review and practice.
Christina Winter:Yes, and that's so, so important. And with everything, like our young learners we like, when we're doing phoning, graphic mapping, we want them to say the word, say the sound, like, don't just write it. So, with our sound wall, we want them to be doing it, we want them to practice it. When they're saying sounds, put your hand up, do you feel the air coming out? You know all of that stuff. So, yes, and nothing that you haven't already taught. It has to be yes, yes.
Lori:Because also, you know, primary teacher here in the room, that's just, you're asking for disaster.
Christina Winter:I don't know this. Yeah, they're not going to know.
Lori:You're going to hear your name 100 times.
Melissa:if that's the case, we all know that and you know what I was thinking about earlier with this y'all was when you were doing the post-its and you were taking off the ones that we had taught already. So important for you to know what happened in the grade before if you're a first or second grade teacher, so you can kind of know coming in I mean, all kids will be on their own page and you'll have to know where they are but just to know what's already been introduced and where you are, so hopefully a scope and sequence that goes across all of those will be really helpful.
Christina Winter:Right, yeah, and that's what I tell teachers when they're putting up their sample at the beginning of the year is to either consult their school like hopefully everyone's using the same scope and sequence or go to the kindergarten team if you're teaching first grade, and say, hey, what did you guys cover? Like, what can I unlock right for?
Lori:students Optimally. Option A, option one scope and sequence is the more reliable option. I'm just giving that a plug, because not that we don't think about it. If you went to three different kindergarten teachers or I mean even at my daughter's old elementary school there were there's nine or 10 kindergarten teachers Can you imagine saying like, oh, what did you unlock? Rather than and honestly, that would be how the second grade teacher would have to do? That because they don't have a reliable scope and sequence. That seems really messy to me versus just having that scope and sequence. So big plug here for option one. There, reliable scope and sequences are where it's at. Yes, absolutely.
Melissa:All right, we have one more logistical question for you about sound walls, which is you know I can feel really overwhelming because I know when I was a teacher it was like I only have so much space on my walls. So if you know, when I get told I have to have up, I had to have a word wall, you know, but it was like I don't have space for that. I need space for these other things. So we know that's a logistical concern from teachers. It's just, you know you're telling me I have to have this vowel valley and the consonants. It's two big things in my classroom to put on a wall. So we would love your advice on what do I do? How do I make that happen if I don't have a ton of wall space?
Christina Winter:Yes, yes, yes. So the sound wall that I created it's like eight foot by four foot. That's big, that's a big bulletin board, and so you have two of those. So, yes, space is a problem for many teachers. So here's a couple of recommendations. Number one if you bought, like a digital sound wall, or if your school provided some kind of like digital where you're printing it out not a hard good that you buy and they mail to you, you can absolutely change the settings in your printer to whatever size you want. So the sound wall behind me I printed at half size 50% and so it's still big enough and you can you students could see it, so you can print it smaller. That's what my point is it's printed smaller.
Melissa:For those listening. It's a tri-fold board that you have behind you, right so?
Lori:think, think, think. Science project yeah.
Christina Winter:And that was that was my second idea is, like many teachers especially if you like push into classrooms or you're reading intervention teacher, who usually is stuck in a closet somewhere you know like they don't have a lot of space so go to like Michael's target office, whatever, or whatever, and get like a tri-fold board it's just like cardboard board for the listeners and you're printing it smaller and then you're building your sound wall on that and then you can bring it with you everywhere you go.
Christina Winter:But yeah, so definitely do that. And then, like I mentioned earlier, some teachers are just really really limited or they don't have, and it's not the most, it's not the best way, but if you're printing it out and making student sound walls whether it be like on a on a table stand or in a folder or something like that where students would have access, and now it's time for, like, our students to pull it out of their desk and look at it, or you know things like that. So those are a few ideas, but I know a lot of teachers are having success by printing their sound wall smaller.
Lori:That's a really great tip. I didn't think of that. I just thought it came that size and you somehow made it work on your tri-fold board. So thank you for that printing tip that I hadn't thought of. Christina, are there any resources you want to share with our listeners? I think you might have made something really special for our listeners and for anyone who follows you on IG too. We're going to promote the heck out of this, you know so yeah.
Christina Winter:So I created us getting started with with the science of reading and I have a toolkit and in that toolkit for your listeners here I have like put in some things that are really about sound walls and then some other extra real good things that teachers have asked for and needed. But I want your teachers to have the phoneme graphing dictionary. You know I showed you that F sound card but maybe not everybody knows that there's three ways to spell the sound, right, maybe you just never thought about it. So I created that little dictionary and then also created you like, the frequency list so that you know you really have to focus, because there's 250 ways to spell the 44 sounds. Can we teach all of those? No, but we are going to be really explicit in teaching the ones that are most common and then our students will learn the other ones later. So there's a frequency list. I've got some word mapping, some editable letters in there, so I hope they go over and grab that and use that in their classrooms.
Melissa:That's so great. When you said like 43% or whatever number you said, I was like how does she know that? Where did she get that information from? So I'm glad I can get it, that's in letters.
Lori:Yeah, yeah. And so we'll link all of that. We'll link the link that takes you to Christina's resources that she's so kindly and generously shared in our show notes. We'll also promote it on social. So, if you're listening, go to any of our social media channels. Literacy, podcast, we're on them all.
Melissa:Sign up for our email list and you'll get it Sign up for our email list.
Lori:I was going to say we're really not like super active on TikTok. That's probably the only one. That's a little. Anyway, this is awesome, Christina. Is there anything else you want to leave our listeners with as we bring this to a close? Anything about sound walls?
Christina Winter:I just really want to encourage teachers Just take little bites. Just I know it feels like a lot sometimes, but like get a good buddy in your building or find somebody on social you can DM me and I'll be cheering you on but take little bites, just do it because it's super helpful for students. And there is there's not, I'm sure Mary shared, there's not like specific research on sound walls, but there is Dr Linnae Ares research on articulation and how that really helps our students.
Melissa:So they definitely there might be some soon, though she said, so look out.
Lori:Stay tuned.
Christina Winter:Stay tuned.
Lori:Thank you so much, Christina. This is joyful and we know it's going to help our listeners so much. Implement sound walls in their classrooms yeah.
Christina Winter:Thank you for inviting me and letting me share a little of my passion.
Melissa:Yeah, to stay connected with us, sign up for our email list at literacypodcastcom, join our Facebook group and follow us on Instagram and Twitter.
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Melissa:Just a quick reminder that the views and opinions expressed by the hosts and guests of the Melissa and Lori Love Literacy podcast are not necessarily the opinions of Great Minds PBC or its employees, we appreciate you so much and we're so glad you're here to learn with us.