I am working in a kindergarten classroom.  The class is focusing on beginning sounds right now.  I wanted to work with a student using my word box.  To find out what area I needed to focus on, I had the students take a spelling test.  I chose this one student  because he had trouble with some of his beginning sounds.  I knew that I would be doing a picture sort with him first and then I would have him match pictures to the actual letter of the alphabet.  The first thing I did was go over all of the pictures with him to make sure he could identify what the objects were.  I realized from his spelling test that he confused the "c" sound with the "s" sound.  I wanted to focus on these sounds and I chose to work with the letter "r" as well.  I had a picture of a castle , lock , and saw.  As I handed him a new picture, he put the work in the column and repeated the words (i.e. lock, light).  After he was through with nine words, I went down the columns and asked what the words started with and what sound they made.  He did very well.  He got stuck on some words, but I had him sound out the beginning sound and he was able to correct himself.  Next, I put up the three letters.  I asked him first what the letters were and how they sounded.  Then I gave him one picture at a time.  He put the picture under the letter he thought the word started with.  I would take it away before I gave him a new picture.  This would force him to match the sound of the word with the letter.  I thought he did really well.  He only missed a few, but when he thought about it for a couple of minutes, he was able to correct his mistakes.
    After the picture sorting (with pictures and letters), we played concentration (memory game).  I used twelve cards (four cards from each letter).  I did not know how well he was going to do here because he would not have the letter or other pictures with the same letter in front of him to help him.  He did great.  I think with continued practice he will understand the beginning sounds of words in no time.