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Strengthen literacy skills with these small-group games using Student Charts

Sound Waves Literacy 1/8/25

We know teachers are always looking for opportunities to further engage students in learning tasks that help to consolidate lessons and address explicitly taught concepts.

So, we’ve gathered some of our favourite Sound Waves games that students can play in small-groups using their Sound Waves Student Charts.

Category Chain

Players: Pairs
Aim of the Game: To identify the most words containing a given phoneme.
What You’ll Need: Student Charts (Foundation, Standard or Extended) – one chart per pair – and three counters per student.

How to Play:
1. Choose a broad category. For example, food.
2. Student 1 starts with the first Sound Box /b/ as in balloon and thinks of a word that both contains the phoneme and belongs to the category. For example, banana.
3. Student 2 starts with the second Sound Box /k/ as in kite and thinks of another word that contains the phoneme. For example, steak.
4. Students continue alternating through the Sound Boxes and thinking of words that contain the phoneme and fit the category.
5. Students must not say any words that appear as word examples on the chart itself. If a student cannot think of a word, they lose one of their counters. When a student loses all three counters, the other student wins.

Variation: For lower years students, remove the categories and simply use words that contain the phoneme. For upper years students, choose categories related to topics in other learning areas, such as countries.

Phoneme Chain

Players: Pairs
Aim of the Game: To say a word that starts with the final phoneme of the preceding word.
What You’ll Need: Student Charts (Foundation, Standard or Extended) – one chart per pair.

How to Play:
1. Student 1 needs to think of a word that starts with the first Sound Box on the chart. For example, big.
2. Student 2 identifies the final phoneme in the word and points to the Sound Box for that phoneme.
3. Student 2 now thinks of a word that starts with that phoneme, for example goat.
4. Student 1 identifies the final phoneme in the word and points to the Sound Box for that phoneme.
5. Students continue taking turns identifying phonemes and thinking of words.

Note: If a student is unable to think of a word that begins with the final phoneme of the previous word, allow students to point to a new Sound Box and come up with a new word so the game can continue.

Working with Graphemes

Players: Pairs
Aim of the Game: To think of words using a given phoneme.
What You’ll Need: Paper/notebooks, pencils and Student Charts (Foundation, Standard or Extended) – one chart for each student.

How to Play:
1. Student 1 chooses a phoneme. For example, /ee/.
2. Student 2 has one minute to write as many words as they can think of containing the phoneme (using the Student Chart as a handy prompt to think of different graphemes to represent the phoneme). For example, sleep, honey, beach, reach, lady.
3. Students score a point for each word they think of (students are not allowed to use the example words on the Student Chart).

Alliteration Sentences

Players: Pairs
Aim of the Game: To compose sentences featuring a given phoneme.
What You’ll Need: Paper/notebooks, pencils and Student Charts (Foundation, Standard or Extended) – one chart for each student.

How to Play:
1. Student 1 nominates a phoneme and points to the corresponding Sound Box on their Student Chart. For example, /f/.
2. Both students compose sentences using as many words as possible that contain the nominated phoneme. The sentences must make sense. For example, Four furry friends laughed around a fire.
3. The student who has the most words with the nominated phoneme scores a point.
4. The game repeats with Student 2 nominating a phoneme and pointing to the Sound Box on their Student Chart ready for both students to start composing sentences.

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