Sound Matching SM app for iPhone and iPad

Welcome to the Sound Matching app! The Sound Matching app develops phonological awareness, sound order sequencing skills, and auditory attention skills. This task builds phonological awareness with an emphasis on sound placement and order within a word. This app increases the ability to break words into smaller parts and recognize smaller parts in words. Being able to break words into smaller parts and recognize sounds in words is an important skill that is necessary for early reading and spelling skills. This app was created by pediatric Speech Language Pathologist Lynn Carahaly, M.A., CCC-SLP.

Phonological awareness provides a beginning reader with an important tool for understanding relations between written and spoken language. A deficit in phonological awareness is accepted as a consistent feature of reading disabilities. Poor phonological awareness is linked to poor reading skills independent of IQ.

Children with deficits in one or more areas of phonological processing abilities may have more difficulty learning to read than those who do not. Phonological awareness describes an individual’s awareness of, and access to, the phonological structure of oral language.

The Sound Matching app directly enhances and elevates phonological awareness skills in order for a young child to become a proficient reader and speller.

The child must identify which word out of a field of two either begins or ends with the same sound as the target card. The child is presented with a target picture card and two other picture cards to sound match. For example, the child is presented with target picture card cub. “Which picture starts with the same sound as cub? leaf or coat.” The child must then tap on the picture of the coat. The following is an example of an ending sound match: “tub, fan, web. Which picture ends with the same sound as tub?”

You have the ability to choose if you would like to work on initial (first) sound matching, or final (last) sound matching, or initial and final in a randomized presentation.

• Starting Sound
• Ending Sound
• Random

The randomized presentation will put more auditory attention demands on the child because they have to really attend to whether the target is asking for the starting sound or ending sound. Selecting “Starting Sound” will always ask to identify the matching first sound. Selecting “Ending Sound” will always ask for the matching last sound.

This app is not intended to be self-guided by the child. The parent, teacher or specialist is to provide support and feedback to the child as needed.

Want more apps to support the literacy and learning development for your child? Check out these other great apps developed by Lynn Carahaly, M.A., CCC-SLP to facilitate phonological awareness, auditory processing, and literacy development: Target Sound Identification, Auditory Word Discrimination, Auditory Blending, Auditory Rhyming, Syllable Counting, and Auditory Figure Ground.