Phonics through Cued Articulation

Cued Articulation

We use a method of visual phonics called Cued Articulation. It was developed by a speech and language therapist called Jane Passey and works to use a hand gesture while you say a sound. Visualising phonics in this way helps the child understand where the sound is made, the shape of the lips as you say the sound, the type of articulation and if the sound is voiced of unvoiced, you will notice some actions use one finger or two fingers. One finger indicated that a sound is unvoiced and two means that it is voiced. 

All our children have some level of hearing loss, we feel that this method of supporting phonics allows them to take an individual learning pathway, developing their phonic understanding and applying it in the way that suites them best. For us it is essential to explore phonics through listening and visual support, this  ensures that the children understand that each letter has a name and a sound, and that we can listen for the sounds in words. Supporting understanding of phonics in this was allows children to begin to blend and segment for reading and writing. Some of our children may struggle to blend whole words the use of Cued Articulation helps children to identify initial sounds so that they can use their word file dictionaries to locate the words that they want to write.

In addition to this we focus on the three L’s: Looking Listening and Lip patterns. Recent research indicates that lip reading is essential in developing good literacy. So we support the use of phonics with a  visual cue that cues our children to our lips, so while they are listening they are watching how these sounds are formed at the mouth and supporting the development of their lip reading skills as well as their phonics.

Below you will find links to videos for each of the cues. Each video in set one has the letter sound through cued articulation then letter name through finger spelling and then a word in pictures and signed that begins with that letter. Set two and three focuses on saying the sound with the cued hand shape and movement.