Corinna Wyles-Plumley

Phonetic Puzzle

How can you make learning fun?Working as a teacher at an after school program outside of OCAD, I noticed a lot of children who came to me having trouble to read because they couldn't grasp their letter sounds. The standard way to teach these were through charts and flashcards, all of which were not very exciting for the kids and because of this didn't promote engagement or learning. So I wanted to create a way that learning letter sounds could be engaging and fun, and a source of play and discovery. Each piece contains a letter and an image to help prompt the phonetic sound of that letter for the child. The pieces can then be joined together to form words that can then be sounded out, with each piece being interchangeable to allow for experimentation of different combinations of letters. I decided on a larger size that would be easier to grab and put together, and have the shape within a circle so it wouldn’t break easily and would be comfortable to handle.The puzzle can be played with independently or with the guidance of an adult.