Letter-Sound Knowledge

Letter-sound knowledge is knowing the sound each letter makes and connecting that sound to the written letter. It is the foundation for phonics, decoding, and spelling. Maitri Learning's Montessori letter sound cards and charts build this skill with Letter Sound Charts, 3-Part Letter Sound Cards, and digital sandpaper letters. Every material is designed by an AMI-certified educator with a Harvard background in neuroscience and aligned with the Science of Reading.

What's in this collection

• Letter Sound Charts give children a clear reference for the sounds letters make. Use these in 3-period lessons to teach the sound of each letter and key digraph in English.
• 3-Part Letter Sound Cards are self-correcting: a built-in control of error helps children recognize and fix their own mistakes. Use these to allow students to practice and solidify their letter-sound knowledge.
• Digital sandpaper letters are files for making your own sandpaper letters, a Montessori tool children trace while saying each letter's sound. Choose the PDF download or the SVG file for Cricut cutting machines. You can use these instead of or in addition to letter-sound charts. 

Why letter-sound knowledge matters for reading

In order to read, we have to connect the sounds we hear in a word to the letters that create those sounds. We do this by changing part of our brain that is used primarily to recognize faces into something that can also recognize letters. We physically create this special brain region, called the "letterbox," by learning letter shapes and their corresponding sounds. The easiest way to learn to read is to start by learning letters and their sounds. 

Why do you include phonograms/digraphs in these materials?

In a partially phonetic language like English, we need more than one letter to make every key sound (for example, chip or fish). So, the Montessori/Dwyer approach assigns one key sound to each single letter (like b as in bat, c as in cat) and many pairs of letters (like th as in thing and ue as in glue). 

This key sound approach simplifies teaching and learning because it is consistent and predictable. We lean on key sound phonetics first and later expand to include spelling variations. 

What comes next

Once children know their letter sounds, they are ready to build words with movable alphabets (encoding) and to read words with our Phonics and Decoding materials. See how every stage fits together in our Montessori scope and sequence, or read more about developing letter-sound knowledge with Montessori sandpaper letters.

Frequently asked questions