What are SUBSTITUTION tasks?

SUBSTITUTION is your child’s ability to listen to words and change a sound to create a new words.

What do SUBSTITUTION tasks have to do with READING & WRITING?

Learning about how sounds can be changed or switched helps children solidify their ability to hear individual parts of words, and their understanding that these parts can be changed to create new words. Your child may know how to say or write a word, and then discover that by adding a sound that they are able to make a new word (e.g. I know ‘and’ – I can add ‘s’ to make ‘sand’ – I can change ‘s’ to ‘b’ to make ‘band’).

What can I do at Home:

• Ask your child to say a word, then say it again but change a sound e.g. Say “pig” (pig). Now change the /p/ in ‘pig’ to /f/ (fig). Remember to say the sound you want your child to change, and not the letter name.

• Talk about how to change the word ‘mat’ into ‘sat’, ‘can’ into ‘cab’, or ‘fin’ into ‘fan’. Ask your child which sound they are changing – is the first, middle, or last sound?

• Follow activities on your PA Substitution Calendar