Phoneme Segmenting Flashcards
Segment words into individual phonemes.
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
Use fingers or counters, one per sound, with the child doing the counting. Do the digraph words — ship, tree — separately from the cluster words, since they are different difficulties: a digraph is two letters and one sound, a cluster is two sounds that run together. Plant is the hardest in the set and belongs last. Eight minutes covers the twelve.
Cueing ladder
Start at the top. Add support one step at a time.
- IndependentSay the item and wait 5 seconds for the student's answer.Log as correct
- Stretch itSay the word again slowly, stretching the sounds or tapping the syllables.Log as cued
- Two choicesOffer two answers, the right one not always second.Log as cued
- ModelDo it yourself, tapping as you go, then the student does it after you.Log as cued
Adjust it
Use pictures, fewer items, and words with fewer sounds.
Take the pictures away, or move on to deleting a sound from a word.
Matching IEP goal
Given spoken words, Student will segment a word into its sounds in 8 of 10 opportunities across 3 consecutive sessions, given no more than one repetition.
Send it home through the parent portal →About this activity
Twelve words broken into their sounds: ship into three, flag into four, hand into four, swim into four, desk into four, frog into four, milk into four, tree into three, stop into four, nest into four, plant into five. Longer and harder than a CVC set — every word here has a cluster or a digraph, which is where segmenting gets difficult.
What to listen for
Watch the clusters. Flag segmented as /fl/ /a/ /g/ takes the cluster as one unit, which is a real stage and not a random error — children hear clusters as wholes before they hear the parts. Notice tree, where the two consonants blend so smoothly that separating them is genuinely difficult even for adults.
Carrying it home
Segmenting a word slowly is a two-second question that fits anywhere. Doing it with the child's own name usually gets a laugh and makes the idea concrete.
What's in this activity
- ship → /sh/ /i/ /p/
- flag → /f/ /l/ /a/ /g/
- hand → /h/ /a/ /n/ /d/
- swim → /s/ /w/ /i/ /m/
- desk → /d/ /e/ /s/ /k/
- frog → /f/ /r/ /o/ /g/
- clap → /c/ /l/ /a/ /p/
- milk → /m/ /i/ /l/ /k/
- tree → /t/ /r/ /ee/
- stop → /s/ /t/ /o/ /p/
- nest → /n/ /e/ /s/ /t/
- plant → /p/ /l/ /a/ /n/ /t/
Questions
- What ages is this for?
- Kindergarten through second, after CVC segmenting is solid.
- Do I need to sign in?
- No, all twelve words play free.
- My student says 'flag' has three sounds. Is that wrong?
- It is a normal stage. Clusters are heard as single units before they are heard as two sounds, and the fix is contrasting flag with lag, which makes the extra sound audible.
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.