About this activity
Eight sentences with several /ch/ words each: The teacher eats lunch at the beach. Charlie watches the chicks hatch. I put ketchup on my sandwich. The chipmunk chews a peach. Mitch plays catch after lunch. Rachel reaches for the matches. Loading a sentence with the target sound is the standard way to raise the demand once single words are stable, and it is where carryover either happens or does not.
How to use it in a session
Read the sentence first and let the student repeat it, then have them read or produce it independently. Take the sentences with three targets — the teacher eats lunch at the beach has three — and shorten them if accuracy collapses, rather than dropping back to single words. Five minutes is a full pass, which makes this a good closing activity after word-level practice earlier in the session.
What to listen for
Listen for the third target. Most students hold the sound for the first /ch/ in a sentence and lose the last one, and where in the sentence accuracy fails tells you more than an overall percentage. Watch for the sound surviving in reading and failing in spontaneous speech — Which bench did you choose? read aloud is easier than the same question asked.
Carrying it home
One sentence a day is a realistic home programme at this level. Pick the one with the most words the child already gets right, and ask them to say it to someone rather than to practise it.
Questions
- What grades is this for?
- First through fourth, for students already accurate on /ch/ at word level.
- Is it free?
- Yes, all eight sentences play with no account.
- My student is accurate at word level and not here. What now?
- That is the expected pattern, not a setback. Shorten the sentences rather than returning to words — three-word carriers around the target keep the connected-speech demand while lowering the load.