Letter Blends - A Lesson Plan for Students With Dyslexia

Follow this lesson plan for children with dyslexia in early grades to teach and reinforce letter blends at the beginning of a word.

• Title: Letter Blend Bingo
• Grade level: Kindergarten, first grade, and second grade
• Subject: Reading/phonics
• Core State Curriculum Standards: RF.1.2. Demonstrate understanding of spoken words, syllables, and sounds (phonemes).
• Approximate time required: 30 minutes

Objective

Students will hear words that begin with consonant blends and correctly match them to the letters on a bingo card.

Children with dyslexia have a hard time processing sounds and matching letters to their corresponding sounds. Multi-sensory activities and lessons have been found to be an effective way of teaching phonics and reading. As a practice, bingo is a fun way to help students listen for and identify common consonant blends.

This lesson helps children learn blended letters through more than one sense. It includes sight by looking at the letters on the bingo board and, if pictures are used, looking at the pictures. It includes auditory because they hear the word as the teacher calls it out. It also includes touch by having the students mark off the letters as they are called out.

Required Materials and Equipment

• Bingo worksheets (grids with five blocks across and five blocks down) with letter blends randomly placed in the blocks. Each worksheet should be different.
• Markers or crayons
• List of words beginning with letter blends or flashcards with pictures of words beginning with blended letters.

Activity

The teacher reads a word and/or shows a picture of a word that begins with a letter blend. Saying the word out loud and showing a picture increases the multi-sensory experience of the game. Students mark the square on their bingo board of the letter blend that represents the beginning sound. For example, if the word was "grape" any student with the letter blend "gr" on their bingo card would mark that square. As each word is called out, students mark the square with the letter blend at the beginning of the word. When a student gets a straight or diagonal line, they have "BINGO."

The game can be continued by having the students try to get every block on their sheet filled or starting again with a different color marker.

Alternative Methods

• Use worksheets with blank bingo boards on them and have the students write one letter blend in each block, making sure to use each letter blend only one time (let students know they will not use all of the letter blends). You may want to write the letter blends at the bottom of the worksheet for students to use for reference.
• Use smaller grids, with four squares up and four squares across and have four grids per page, allowing for four games of bingo.
• Use the entire alphabet and have students mark the beginning or ending sound of a word.

Bingo cards can be customized to match your current lesson, for example, simple vocabulary words, ending consonants, or colors and shapes.

Tip: Laminate bingo cards so they can be used more than once. Use dry-erase markers to make it easy to wipe off marks.

Reference

Letter blends commonly found in the beginning of words:

bl, br, ch, cl, cr, dr, fl, fr, gl, gr, fr, pl, pr, sc, scr, sh, sk, sl, sm, sn, sp, spl, squ, st, str, sw, th,thr, tr, tw, wh

List of possible words:

• Block, Brown
• Chair, Clown, Crayon
• Dragon
• Flower, Frame
• Glow, Grape
• Plane, Prize
• Scare, Scrap
• Skate, Sled, Smile, Snake, Spoon, Splash, Square, Stone, Street, Swing
• Truck, Twin