About this activity
Twelve words with /ch/ at the end: beach, peach, watch, catch, match, lunch, couch, teach, reach, witch, patch, bench. Final position is its own target — a child who has chin and chair may still say wat or wash for watch, because releasing the affricate at the end of a word is a different motor act from starting one with it.
How to use it in a session
Ask for the word on its own first, then in a two-word phrase — my lunch, the beach — before moving to a sentence. Contrast the near misses directly: watch against wash and catch against cat, because the two most common substitutions are a fricative and a stop, and hearing the pair is how a child learns what they are aiming for. Six minutes is a full pass through twelve cards at word level.
What to listen for
Listen for what replaces the /ch/. A fricative — wash for watch — means the stop closure is missing; a plain stop — cat for catch — means the release is not becoming a fricative. Those are different halves of the same sound and they need different cues. Watch for the sound disappearing entirely at the end of a word, which happens most on the longer words like bench and patch.
Carrying it home
Lunch, watch, beach and couch all turn up in an ordinary day, and that is enough of a home programme. Ask a family member to notice one word rather than the sound in general — listening for lunch at lunchtime is a task somebody can actually do.
Questions
- What ages is this for?
- First through fourth grade, which covers most of the window in which /ch/ is an active target.
- Do I need an account?
- No, all twelve cards play free with no login.
- My student has initial /ch/ but not final. Is that normal?
- Yes, and it is the usual order. Final position generally comes after initial for affricates, so the same sound needs to be worked position by position rather than assumed once it appears.