/f/ Medial — Spelling
Articulation · Grades K–3 · 12 cards
Session summary (SOAP)
Stays on this screen. Nothing is saved or sent.
Mark a card Correct, Correct with cue or Incorrect and the summary writes itself here.
How to run it
Ask which letters make the sound before building. Muffin doubles the f, elephant and dolphin use ph, laughing uses gh, and sofa uses a single f — five patterns in twelve words. Group them by spelling rather than mixing, so the student meets two ph words together and sees the pattern. Keep asking for the production between letters, since the sound is still the target.
Cueing ladder
Start at the top. Add support one step at a time.
- IndependentAfter building each word, the student says it aloud. Wait 3 seconds.Log as correct
- Visual cuePoint to your mouth, or show the mouth picture for /f/, before the student tries again.Log as cued
- Verbal modelSay the word; the student says it right after you.Log as cued
- Placement cueTop teeth rest lightly on your bottom lip. Blow air out between them with your voice off.Log as cued
Adjust it
Drop to syllables ('fa' and 'fee'), or use fewer cards.
Put each word in a short carrier phrase with no /f/ in it or mix in /f/ words from another position.
Matching IEP goal
Given word cards, Student will produce /f/ in the word-medial position in single words in 8 of 10 opportunities across 3 consecutive sessions, given no more than a visual cue.
Send it home through the parent portal →About this activity
The twelve medial /f/ words — elephant, muffin, coffee, dolphin, waffle, sofa, office, laughing, safari, taffy, gopher, before — as a spelling task. Derived from the flashcard deck, and here the spelling is genuinely interesting rather than incidental: the same sound is written f, ff, ph and gh across these twelve words, which is worth a student's attention.
What to listen for
Watch the doubling. Muffin, coffee, waffle, office and taffy all double the consonant after a short vowel, which is a rule worth naming — and sofa, safari and before do not, because the vowel before them is long. Notice whether the student hears one sound and writes one letter for ph and gh, which is the expected error and the reason those spellings need teaching rather than sounding out.
Carrying it home
Ask which two letters make the /f/ sound in elephant. It is a short question with a surprising answer, and the surprise is what makes it stick — then try dolphin, which does the same thing, and laughing, which does something else again.
What's in this activity
- elephant
- muffin
- coffee
- dolphin
- waffle
- sofa
- office
- laughing
- safari
- taffy
- gopher
- before
Questions
- How is this different from the flashcards?
- Same twelve words, built from letters. The spelling patterns here are unusually varied, which makes this version worth doing with a student who is also working on reading.
- Is it free?
- Yes, no account or card needed.
- Why is 'laughing' spelled with gh?
- It is a historical spelling — the letters once represented a sound English no longer has. There is no rule to work it out, so it is one to learn as a whole word.
Use this board with your caseload
With a free account, every correct, cued and incorrect mark is saved to the student and scored against their IEP goal, with the data written up for you. Assign it as home practice through the parent portal.
Track progress freeFree for SLPs. No card, no trial clock.