Sound city reading program

Reading Horizons, a leading provider of tech-enabled foundational reading instruction for K-12 schools and districts, has expanded its flagship solution, Reading Horizons Discovery, with the addition of Sound City. This expansion aligns with the science that informs reading development and empowers teachers to help K–2 students connect speech to print, and to decode and spell words with greater proficiency.

Reading Horizons Discovery is a foundational reading program based on a simple and effective method to help all students develop phonemic awareness, decoding, and spelling proficiency. The program includes instructional materials, interactive digital lessons, decodable books, ongoing professional learning, and now an interactive digital sound wall. Sound City provides skill assessments, review activities, and games. Features of Sound City include:

• Five-minute, daily phonemic awareness lessons that follow the gradual release of responsibility model and align to National Reading Panel recommendations;
• 44 direct-instruction lessons, one for each phoneme in the English language, that align to Reading Horizons phonics lessons;
• Interactive sound wall software that allows students to record and photograph their own sound articulation to build personal digital sound walls; and
• Classroom instructional materials, including wall posters, portable sound wall cards, and a phoneme card set to support teacher instruction.

Formats/platforms used:

Sound City is available through Reading Horizons Discovery, which can be accessed via any internet-enabled device.

Primary URL:

https://www.readinghorizons.com/

Problem solved:

Together, Reading Horizons Discovery and Sound City allow students to connect speech to print and to improve proficiency in decoding and spelling.

Grade/age range:

Sound City is designed for students in grades K–2.

Core or supplemental:

Reading Horizons Discovery and Sound City supplements core curriculum and hones in

Question: What is the difference between the Sound City Teacher’s Manual and the Sound City Daily Phonemic Awareness Lessons?

Answer: The Sound City Teacher’s Manual is the instruction that goes along with the Reading Horizons Sound Wall. This instruction is designed to support explicit instruction of the 44 English phonemes (individual speech sounds) and corresponding graphemes (letters).

The Reading Horizons Discovery® Sound City Daily Phonemic Awareness Lessons are designed to support educators in helping their students reach a level of phonemic proficiency necessary for automatic word recognition. It includes 36 weeks of lessons and addresses the phonological awareness component of reading acquisition. The Daily Phonemic Awareness Lessons are intended for whole-class instruction in grades K–2 and provide quick five-minute lessons for Monday through Thursday instruction and a review game each Friday. Phonemic awareness instruction is essential to a complete reading and spelling program and should be combined with other vital components such as phonics instruction.

The Sound City Teacher's Manual and Daily Phonemic Awareness Lessons should only be used if you are teaching Legacy Reading Horizons Discovery® 

What do city streets, a senior retreat, digraph deliveries, and a silent letter library have in common? They can all be found in a Sound City! Building a Sound City bulletin board delightfully engages students in learning phonemes and phonograms by creating a visual representation of phonics that most would consider an auditory learning experience. All year long, children actively participate in the “construction” of houses, city buildings, and vehicles while quickly developing their phonemic awareness. As phonemic awareness increases, so does reading fluency, reading comprehension, and spelling memory. Seamlessly, students integrate phonics across all subject areas. They begin to “see” it everywhere! Drawing students into the reading and spelling process, Sound City seems almost magical!

The construction of a Sound City is integral to Mrs. Ingham’s reading and writing methodologies. Turn to Appendix 5 in your yellow IEW Classroom Supplement and Lesson Plans binder. You may read more about Sound City there and find a list of the streets, houses, buildings, and vehicles to gradually add to your city. On the Classroom Supplement help page found on the IEW website under Webinars and Recordings, you may listen to two talks on Sound City given by Shirley George, Mrs. Ingham’s daughter and master second grade teacher. The handouts mentioned are in Appendix 5. Listen to Poetry as an Integrator by Mrs. Ingham as well. Appendix 4 includes the handouts for her talk.

How do you construct a Sound City? Throughout the year, the Classroom Supplement and Lesson Plans tells you when to place a building or vehicle on the city based on the sounds found in the poetry lessons. Students enjoy making hammering and sawing noises as the houses are stapled to the bulletin board. They pull words from the poem that contain that sound as well as share words they know. The teacher writes the words on the house, bu