1. The teacher uses hand motions and signals to show the individual letter sounds and how to blend them together. Students learn to recognize and produce the phonemes orally first, then in their written form.

2. To develop their awareness of the phoneme, students need to be able to distinguish that sound. Awareness of the separate phonemes that make up a word is critical for later matching those sounds with letters. Short ‘e’ is difficult for speakers of some languages to perceive and produce.

3. She practices creating rhyming words and word families with the target sound short ‘e’.

For more information. you will want to view the Sound-Symbol Transfer and Interference chart in the Staff Development Handbook in the Milestones Teacher’s Edition, when teaching any of the phonological sections in Milestones. More information and the Instructional Routine for Phonics and Phonemic Awareness section are also found in the Staff Development Handbook.