Deleting and manipulating sounds

Deleting and manipulating individual sounds is the most complex phonological awareness skill. It is an important task when students are brainstorming rhyming or alliterative words, or correcting their spelling. It involves identifying the sounds in words, and deleting or swapping sounds to make new words.

An example of deletion is: "What is 'swing' without the /s/?" The answer would be "wing"

An example of manipulation is: "What happens when you take off the /d/ in 'dog' and swap it with /ck/?" The answer would be "dock".

Here are some demonstrations of phoneme deletion, and how teachers might scaffold children to develop this skill:

For example, the counters can be used to represent the phonemes in the following words:

Vowel sounds can also be deleted or manipulated:

lack

lack

lack

lack

It can be more of a challenge to delete sounds that are not at the start of the word.

Q. What is "strung" without the /r/?

These phoneme deletion and manipulation tasks can be created with any word, and will often result in interesting and humorous new words. Students can use such activities to play with words and discuss what is a real word and what is not.

References

Figure above adapted from Schuele, C. Melanie, and Boudreau, Donna. (2008)"Phonological awareness intervention: Beyond the basics." Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 39.1: 3-20.