The tasks provided in the Powerful Vowels Kits are designed to engage the underlying skills of phonological awareness.

1   Children need to learn that words are made up of discreet sounds (phonemes). In the early stages, a child might think the word “cat” has just one sound. Many need to be explicitly taught to listen for and separate each small sound within the word, /c/ /a/ /t/.

2   Once a child can segment each sound, they represent the number of phonemes using the white board marker - a dash for each phoneme.

3   Children then use the alphabetic code they have been taught to find the most suitable grapheme tile to match for each phoneme.

4   The child can run their finger under the tiles to blend the graphemes and read the word they have made.

5   The child can use the tiles to refer to as they practice producing the word in its written form.