I wanted to help my students practice listening for the difference between long and short vowel sounds, as well as listening for nasal blends. Being aware of the vowel sound is an important component to correct spelling, and this exercise is great practice for vowel awareness.
You will need colored foam blocks that you can get at the dollar store. I designated orange for short vowel sounds, blue for long, green for nasal blends, and reserved red for red words.
Each vowel sound gets its own color.
Verbally tell your student a word, and have them select the appropriate colored block that corresponds to the vowel sound(s). For instance, if you said “blast”, the student would choose an orange block. If you said “plate”, they would choose a blue block. More than one syllable? They will need one block for each syllable, since each syllable can have a different vowel sound.
I like to dictate some of the student’s review words as a warm up, and have them hand me the colored block. If they give me the correct color, they get a point. You can play until they get a given number of points.
Color coding the vowel sound is also great to have students do before they spell a spelling word, as it requires them to determine the vowel sound (short, long or nasal) before they start the actual spelling process. I had one student who kept trying to spell the “ink” sound as “enke” (that would be e silent e). Once I started having him choose between orange, blue and green, he had a visual cue that helped him remember to think about nasal blends as a spelling choice. Students can also check their work by making sure they did something to words with long vowel sounds to “make the word blue.”
I also like this exercise for sentence dictation. Many times students forget to check their spelling when they are writing sentences. By having them listen for the vowel pattern of each word in the sentence, you help them become aware of the differences in the word sounds. It is also a visual way for them to make sure they have all the words, and that they have the correct vowel sound in each.
Visual cues help with sentence dictation too.
I have seen remarkable improvements in spelling when the student uses the blocks!
Note that the blocks can also be used when reading review words as well. Simply have students “pattern match” the colored blocks to the syllables on the page. Great for students who need an extra visual cue when discriminating between short and long vowel sounds!