Bringing Phonics to Life: How to Teach Glued Sounds NG & NK

For some reason, every single year, certain concepts are sure to trip up our kids. No matter where we put them in the scope and sequence. No matter how we teach. Some phonics features just need a little bit more time and attention. -NK and -NG are on this list for us. Are they on yours?!

There are many different names that glued sounds can go by… welded teams, ending blends, nasal blends, some even call them digraphs (but technically only -ng is a digraph). No matter what you call them, let talk about how to bring phonics to life with -NG and -NK.

What are glued sounds?

When a vowel has the letters <ng> or <nk> after it, we call this a glued sound. The 3 letters make a special sound. They are “glued” together!

Glued sounds include: ang, ing, ong, ung & ank, ink, onk, unk. Glued sounds can be found in one syllable words like bring, honk and bank. They can also be found in longer words like mustang, ringlet, bankrupt and chipmunk.

Now, let's chat about how we can bring the glued sounds of -NG and -NK to life!

How can you bring phonics to life with glued sounds?

To help your readers remember these special sounds, relate them to a school supply you have readily available.... glue!

We teach our students that when they see a nasal blend, or welded team in a word, they can code it by circling the group of letters. They are "gluing" the sounds together.

When should you teach glued sounds?

In our scope and sequence at Up & Away Literacy, we wait to teach this concept until after students have a firm foundation of digraphs and blends, and we've taught a few syllable division rules.

Activity Ideas

Practicing this concept can be as simple as...

• Getting the glue out! Anchor this idea of "glued sounds" with glue! Print out a word list that students can cut up and glue back together. Show them how to cut the words by onset and rime. For example, the word bring would be cut br-ing.
• Word sorts are also a great activity for all of the welded teams. 
• Write a word on the board. Have your students copy the word down and then circle the nasal blend with a fun gel pen, highlighter, marker, etc.
• Play a game! Our NK & NK Flip Flop game is a great option. To play the game, each student will turn over a card that has either an NG or NK word on it. They will write the word on their dry erase board (example: sing) and then write the word again below but "flip flop" the NG to an NK (sink). They will then read their new word aloud. If the new word is a real word, they earn a point. Get the game HERE!
• Tap, Map, Read & Write activity. Students use colorful picture cards to tap, map, read and write 10 words that follow this phonics pattern. Then they'll write a sentence using 2 of the words on their list. We've included an editing checklist to help with the sentence writing too! Click HERE.
  
• We also have loads of resources including: word lists, decodable readers (fiction & nonfiction), centers and games to practice this skill (click HERE).

Time for a FREEBIE!

Help your students remember glued sounds with our freebie anchor chart. Click the image below to download yours! 😊

Done-For-You Resources!

You may already have a phonics curriculum that you have to follow, but often times the section on small groups and differentiation is slim (if it exists at all). And we both know that real growth happens in well-planned small groups. That's where Launching Literacy comes in!

For $0.39 a day, you'll get access to everything in the membership for an entire year, PLUS we'll be with you every step of the way. We've even added a request box! Send us your literacy wishes and we'll do our best to take your ideas and turn them into resources that you can actually use 😊

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