Target Sound ID

Welcome to the Target Sound ID app. The Target Sound ID app develops phonological awareness, sound order sequencing skills, and auditory attention skills. This app increases the ability to break words down 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. Target sound identification promotes literacy development as well as sound identification during speech production tasks. Memory also plays a small part in this task, as the child must internally hold onto the word in their mind while analyzing the sound in a specific position of the target word. 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.

The Target Sound Identification app directly enhances and elevates phonological awareness skills in order for a young child to become a proficient reader and speller. The Target Sound Identification app includes over 350 colorful and engaging picture cards.

The child is presented with a picture card and a field of three sound (phonogram) cards. The child must identify (by tapping on) a sound in the specific requested position of the word. For example, “Point to the first sound you hear in the word: ship”. In this example the correct response is: sh. "Point to the last sound you hear in the word: dog”. In this example the correct response is: g.

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

• First Sound
• Last 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 first sound or last sound. Selecting “First Sound” will always ask to identify the first sound. Selecting “Last Sound” will always ask for the 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: Auditory Word Discrimination, Auditory Blending, Sound Matching, Auditory Rhyming, Syllable Counting, and Auditory Figure Ground.