Develop basic phonemic awareness skills with this listening activity. My Guess the Sound Listening Activity teaches students auditory discrimination skills and prepares them for hearing sounds (phonemes) in words.

3 Levels of Sound Discrimination

1. Students first identify common environmental sounds.

2. Next, they identify and sequence these sounds in a 2-sound sequence.

3. Then, they identify and sequence the sounds in a 3-sound sequence.

This is a quick and easy no-prep game to develop auditory memory and sequential processing skills in your young students. Easily teach them how to identify, recall and discuss the order of sounds.

Please Note: This is a PowerPoint presentation and you will need to view it in PowerPoint. The audio files will not work in Google Slides.

What’s Included in This Sound Discrimination PowerPoint?

There are 60 teaching slides guiding students through the process of identifying, recalling and sequencing familiar environmental sounds.

For best results, play the PowerPoint in Presentation mode.

It contains audio files so you will need speakers.

Getting students to pay attention is a constant challenge in any early childhood classroom. Sound discrimination activities like this one can help.

Young children learn about sounds AND the art of listening when they participate in sound discrimination activities.

Imagine Having a Class Full of Attentive Listeners

Now that’s a teacher's dream come true!

Auditory discrimination activities help children become attentive listeners.

Yes!! Your students learn to recognise and analyse the sounds they hear through consistent practice in sound or auditory discrimination.

They learn to be active listeners.

Teach Basic Phonemic Awareness Skills

Auditory or sound discrimination is the first step in developing basic phonemic awareness skills. This PowerPoint activity will teach it in a fun and engaging way.

Want to teach your students how to hear the sounds in words? Start with teaching auditory discrimination. Auditory or sound discrimination is the secret to helping your students identify the sounds or phonemes within words.

At the very beginning of any good phonemic awareness program, students learn to recognise and distinguish between environmental sounds.

That’s why I created this PowerPoint activity. I needed a way for my students to learn about sounds, see their differences, and learn to sequence them. I also wanted to introduce them to the language I’d be using when we started decoding. (first sound, middle sound, ending sound)

After mastering environmental sound discrimination, it is an easy transition to progress to the next stage. In the second stage, students explore spoken language and words. They soon learn that words consist of individual sounds too.

💚 Don’t expect your students to know how to blend and segment phonemes if they don’t have strong auditory processing skills. Many early childhood teachers jump straight into blending and segmenting phonemes at the start of school. They wonder why their kids aren’t getting it. Please don’t overlook the importance of the initial stages of phonemic awareness - sound discrimination and attention-building.