Sound City Reading

Welcome to the newest version of the Sound City Reading website. Sound City Reading is a free sequential, phonetic reading program which will be available on this site. To use the Sound City Reading materials, you will need to download and print the PDF files for the level you want to teach.

There are five levels in this program.

• Level 1, Learning The Alphabet, uses two workbooks to teach reading readiness skills to beginning readers. This level is designed to be used during the first half of the kindergarten year. Students learn to recognize the letters of the alphabet and pronounce their sounds. The letters that are easiest to write are taught first, followed by letters that are more challenging or less common. Students trace large and small letter patterns for each new letter, to help them remember the letter shape, remember its sound, and develop the correct letter formation for that letter. For each new letter, pages in the workbook show words that begin with that letter, along with a picture to illustrate each word. Students do not read these words. The teacher reads them aloud and students circle the newly introduced letter at the beginning of the words. Whenever possible, similar pages with words and pictures are used to introduce words that end with the new letter. Students also practice oral blending and segmenting exercises to develop their ability to hear the individual sounds in words. In addition, the teacher introduces a series of print awareness exercises to help students understand how letters relate to the words in books.
• Level 2, Exploring Sounds In Words, uses two workbooks to teach advanced reading readiness skills to beginning readers. These books are designed to be used in kindergarten after students have completed Level 1. The alphabet letters are introduced again, in the same order in which they were previously introduced.

I will add more information on this page as time permits.