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/ Oral Segmenting Drill

Oral Segmenting Drill

Purpose

Practice distinguishing seperate sounds in words

Summary

The oral segmenting drill supports phonemic awareness and spelling by practicing segmenting words into their constituent sounds. This skill is very useful for spelling words accurately. If appropriate, learners can finger spell the word for an additional scaffold.

Materials Needed

This exercise is conducted orally, you will need a list of words to segment.

How to deliver

  1. This drill is conducted orally.
  2. Say the first word in your list and ask the learner to segment it into its sounds, using finger spelling if necessary. For example, you say 'mat', they segment it into /m/ /ă/ /t/.
  3. Continue through all the words in your list until you reach the end.
Suggested script
"I am going to say a word, I want you to break/finger-spell the word into its sounds."

Common Issues & Prompts

Issue: Learner incorrectly segments a word

  • Do this: Model finger-spelling the word for the learner.
  • Example: The learner segments ‘shaft’ as /sha/, /f/, /t/. Show the learner how to finger-spell it as /sh/, /ā/, /f/, /t/.
  • Then: Ask them to repeat and then move to the next word.

Additional Tips

  • Finger spelling means lifting a finger for each sound as you say it in a word. Finger spelling can help learners notice all the sounds and reduce cognitive load.

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