Welded Sounds

When working with a student on am (jam), she said, "In Wilson they call that a welded

sound." I liked that and I've adopted the term to use with my students. I demonstrate

types of sounds using hardware in the following manner:

Single consonant sounds - a nut and a bolt represent 2 separate sounds when you screw them together you get a blend, you can still hear each sound and you can get them apart.

• Digraph - a copper T (for plumbing) represents a digraph. I put a large blue paper clip in one end to represent one letter and a yellow one in the other end for the other letter. A green paper clip is inserted into the top and is connected to the other two clips. The green clip shows the student that the two letters come together to make a completely different sound. A piece of foam helps to hold all of the clips in place.

• Welded sound - part of a padlock system allows me to demonstrate the meaning of a welded sound. It is welded. The student can see the separate parts and the welding which binds them. If we could get them apart; the vowel would not be recognizable. So we are going to keep them together. Examples of welded sounds are: am, an, ild, ind, ing, ang...... 

I haven't come up with hardware to represent a vowel team. I've never found introducing

vowel teams difficult, so there is no plan in the works for that.

Your thoughts on this subject interest me. If you want to take the time, shoot me an email

at [email protected].

I Hope the pictures are helpful, Stacey