A Versatile Sound Buttons Activity

Looking for the perfect activity to add to your phoneme lesson plan? Sound button flashcards are a powerful resource that can help young learners develop their phonics skills, allowing them to practise segmenting and blending sounds in words.

The lists in this printable set of flashcards have been carefully constructed by the expert English teachers on our teacher team, so the challenges pupils face will gradually increase as they work their way through the set of more than 100 printable flashcards. This makes for easy differentiation too!

With eight colour-coded card sets within the larger activity downloaded, you can support pupils at different skill levels!

The eight colour-coded sets in the activity are broken out as follows:

• Purple  — Words that contain the letters s-a-t-p-i-n
• Light Blue — Words that contain the above, plus the letters m-d-g-o-c-k
• Pink — Words that contain the above, plus the letters e-r-u-b-h-f-l
• Dark Blue — Words that contain the above, plus the letters j-w-v-x-y-z-q
• Red — Words that contain all single-letter phonemes, plus the digraph sh
• Yellow — Words that contain all single-letter phonemes, plus the digraph ch
• Green — Words that contain all single-letter phonemes, plus the digraph wh
• Brown — Words that contain all single-letter phonemes, plus the digraph th

Low on colour printing options? You’ll also find a black-and-white PDF version of this resource in the download options, along with colour versions in Microsoft Word and PowerPoint formats. Using Google Classroom? You can upload the PowerPoint and Word documents straight to your Google Drive for easy editing!

Phoneme Segmentation Examples

We didn’t stop there! Are you looking for a list of phoneme segmentation examples that are kid-friendly so you can use them in your classroom as you’re introducing your activity? We’ve got you covered!

Check out these examples of words that range from three phonemes to six!

3-Phoneme Words

• Cat (c-a-t)
• Them (th-e-m)
• Tree (t-r-ee)
• Sun (s-u-n)
• Cup (c-u-p)
• Fox (f-o-x)

4-Phoneme Words

• Frog (f-r-o-g)
• Ship (sh-i-p)
• Lamp (l-a-m-p)
• Think (th-i-n-k)
• Crab (c-r-a-b)
• Drum (d-r-u-m)

5-Phoneme Words

• Zebra (z-e-b-r-a)
• Monkey (m-o-n-k-ey)
• Rocket (r-o-ck-e-t)
• Blast (b-l-a-s-t)

6-Phoneme Words

• Planet (p-l-a-n-e-t)
• Cricket (c-r-i-ck-e-t)

You can also use the names of the pupils in your class to help illustrate this concept in a more relatable way! For example, the name Liam can be segmented as L-i-a-m, while Javon would be segmented as J-a-v-o-n.

You’ll find many of these examples in your flashcards and more, with dots and dashes beneath each individual phoneme or digraph for easy segmentation and blending. The dashes noted on the last 4 sets of cards are digraphs or two consonants that stand together to represent a single sound.

Pupils can select a card and segment each sound in the word as they tap each black dot on the card – for example, /c/ /a/ /t/.

Pupils can then blend all the sounds back together as they move their fingers from left to right — for example, cat.

How to Access & Use Your Sound Button Flashcards

Ready to download your fresh new phoneme segmentation activity? Scroll to the green ‘download’ button above, and click on the drop-down to choose between PDF, Word or PowerPoint format.

You’ll also be able to choose between black and white or colour.

Note: The Microsoft Word documents do not contain the complete set of words that you’ll access in the PDF documents.

More Activities for Your Phoneme Segmentation Lesson Plans!

Need more activities for your pupils to practise sound manipulation or to assess your pupils’ progress in phoneme segmentation? Explore any of these teacher-created resources: