If you are new to teaching early phonics, you may be wondering, What is SATPIN? SATPIN refers to the first six letters students learn in many phonics programs. Knowing why we teach these letters first can be helpful in teaching (and explaining to parents who wonder why you don’t just teach ABC and so on.)
We teach SATPIN words first because this combination allows students to blend sounds to create a large number of words. Plus the S and N are continuous sounds or sounds that can be held, which can be useful when teaching students to segment and blend sounds.
Some common SATPIN words are:
- Nap
- Nip
- Pan
- Pat
- Pin
- Pit
- Sap
- Sat
- Sap
- Sip
- Tap
- Tip
These are arranged in alphabetical order, but you can teach similar sounds—at, pat, sat and nap, sap, tap—together.
3 SATPIN activities
Introduce the SATPIN letters and sounds, one at a time. Display the letters with key SATPIN in your classroom. Encourage students to listen or look for words with your SATPIN letters/sounds.
Once students have these six letters/sounds, you can practice blending and segmenting words. Blending is pushing sounds together to build words. For example, you blend /s/ /a/ /t/, to get sat.
Segmenting is the opposite. You pull apart individual sounds in words such as in nap: /n/ /a/ /p/.
Then use a mix of SATPIN worksheets and other SATPIN activities to provide lots of practice.
1. SATPIN read & write
Students practice reading SATPIN words and then writing them. As they read, have them segment each sound and then blend them to get the whole word. Then as they write the word, they should segment the sounds again as they write each letter/sound. Then they can blend the sounds to read the word again.
2. SATPIN missing sounds
Given a picture, can students fill in the missing sounds? You can start by giving students some of the sounds. For example, if you show a picture of a pan, you could show P _ N. Ask students to say the sounds for the parts of the word they see and fill in the missing sound.
3. SATPIN word bingo
Each student needs a SATPIN Words bingo card and colored markers. You can use plastic markers that students put over a word, or, if you have laminated cards, students can use dry erase markers to mark the words they hear. BINGO helps students build fluency as they are looking to match the word they hear with the word they see quickly. The first student to fill a row or their card (tell them which at the beginning of the game) wins.
More SATPIN activities
If you want even more SATPIN activities, check out my CVC worksheet bundle. My CVC packs progressively introduce sounds/letters at the CVC level.
You can get individual packs, with this progression of sounds:
Set 1 sounds: a, i, m, n, o, p, s, t – https://topnotchteaching.com/downloads/cvc-words-set-1/
Set 2 sounds: b, c, g, h – https://topnotchteaching.com/downloads/cvc-words-set-2/
Set 3 sounds: d, e, f, v – https://topnotchteaching.com/downloads/cvc-words-set-3/
Set 4 sounds: k, l, r, u – https://topnotchteaching.com/downloads/cvc-words-activities-set-4/
Set 5 sounds: j, w, x, y, z – https://topnotchteaching.com/downloads/cvc-words-set-5/
Set 6 sounds: ff, ll, ss, zz – https://topnotchteaching.com/downloads/double-consonants/
Check it out with this free sample: CVC Worksheets Free Sample:
The sample includes SATPIN sounds as well as M and O (M is the next consonant usually taught and O the next vowel.)
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