Reading

Phonemic Awareness at your Fingertips

August 8, 2016 by Jodi Leave a Comment

Phonological and phonemic awareness is such an important foundation for reading, writing, and spelling. Phonemic awareness skills are critical to reading success, but they are sometimes overlooked.

When I meet with my students in small group during that first couple weeks of school, I like to assess their phonemic awareness skills to see which students are going to need additional practice in this area. Then, I can work with these students to build these important skills.

I absolutely love using fun manipulatives for practicing phonemic awareness. We use Slinkys, magnetic wands, game chips, blocks, etc. to keep it hands on. The important thing to remember is that phonemic awareness is auditory and does not involve print. You are working on phonics skills if you are discussing letters and using writing words. Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate the sounds in words.

I found this article on at www.dyslexia-reading-well.com so interesting when it discussed phonemic awareness. “According to Julian Elliott and Elena Grigorenko in their 2014 book The Dyslexia Debate, the phonological deficit hypothesis has been the dominant cognitive explanation of dyslexia for over four decades. According to this hypothesis, “children with dyslexia are hindered by faulty representation of speech sounds, which leads to problems involving the precise processing of spoken words.”

I really wanted to make sure that I hit these crucial skills this year, especially for my beginning readers. I created this Phonemic Awareness at your Fingertips packet to ensure that my students will have a strong foundation with all of the phonemic awareness skills.

This packet includes pre and post assessments as well as student checklists for each of the phonemic awareness skills (sentence segmentation, rhyming, alliteration, syllables, onset & rime, phoneme blending, phoneme segmentation, phoneme deletion, and phoneme substitution).

I have also created activities to go along with each phonemic awareness skill.

I placed all of my activities and assessments into a binder, so it is at my fingertips and ready to go.

If you would like to check out this packet, you may head on over to my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

Must-Haves for Manipulatives for Teaching Phonemic Awareness

The following links are Amazon Affiliate links.

Phonics Spinners

July 8, 2016 by Jodi Leave a Comment

I am always trying to think of ways to make phonics practice more fun. These phonics spinners will be the perfect addition to independent reading centers this coming year.

The students will love being able to spin prior to coloring their picture. I have six separate sets of Phonics Spinners, or I have placed them in a bundle.

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Phonics-Spin-It-Color-It-Bundle-2625938

So far, I have created a set for beginning sounds, ending sounds, short vowels, long vowels, beginning blends, and digraphs. I may add more to the bundle eventually.

These are a simple NO PREP activity that I know my students will enjoy.

Each set can also be purchased separately.

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Beginning-Sounds-Spin-It-Color-It-2625952

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Ending-Sounds-Spin-It-Color-It-2632221

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Short-Vowel-Spin-It-Color-It-2625955

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Long-Vowel-Spin-It-Color-It-2625957

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Beginning-Blends-Spin-It-Color-It-2625945

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Digraphs-Spin-It-Color-It-2632227

Alphabet Poetry

June 14, 2016 by Jodi 1 Comment

I love using poetry in my classroom. It’s great for working on reading fluency as well as rhyming words and word patterns.

During those first few weeks of school, it is so important to build your student’s reading confidence. I have found that using simple poetry is the perfect way to do this.

A couple years ago, I created an Alphabet Poetry packet that included very simple and easy to read poems for each letter of the alphabet. This week, I gave it a major overhaul with new graphics and fonts.

This first set of poems are very short and great for beginning readers.

I have included a color and a black and white version of each poem. I also have a handwriting tracing page, and a blank page. These are great for early in the year handwriting practice.

The poems are a great addition to a poetry folder for the beginning of the year.

If you already own this set, you can go and redownload the update at no additional cost.

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/ABC-Poetry-266867

After updating this first set, I decided to create a second set of poems that are at a little higher level.

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/ABC-Poetry-Set-2-2591887

This set may work better for some of your students or as a follow up to the first set of poems.

They are written in the same format, but are a little longer.

I have also bundled both sets of poems together.

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/ABC-Poetry-Bundle-Set-1-and-Set-2-2591973

Do you use poems in your classroom on a regular basis?

2nd Grade Morning Work

June 8, 2016 by Jodi Leave a Comment

For the past couple of years, I have been using my 1st grade Morning Work packets every morning. I have had many requests over the years to create a 2nd grade version. This summer, I finally decided to tackle this project.

It is similar to the first grade morning work in many ways, but I did make some changes. Obviously, the content is different since it’s geared towards 2nd graders. I have rotated back and forth between 2nd grade sight words and short reading passages with a comprehension skill. I have also added an explanation component to the daily word problem.

I did not include the Common Core Standards that are addressed on each page like I did with the 1st grade packet. Indiana, as well as many other states, have stopped using CC, and have readopted their own standards. For this reason, I did not include these. However, they do address MANY different reading and math standards.

As of right now, I only have the first quarter of the 2nd grade packet finished. I will be working on the other three sections this summer. These can be purchased separately by quarters, or as a year long BUNDLE. Just click on either of the pictures below to check them out.

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/2nd-Grade-Morning-Work-First-Quarter-2584539

The bundle is a growing bundle that only includes the first quarter as of now. As I finish up each of the other three sections, you will be able to redownload the product at no additional charge if you purchase the bundle.

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/2nd-Grade-Morning-Work-Year-Long-Bundle-2584543

Nonfiction Fluency

May 15, 2016 by Jodi 1 Comment

I love using nonfiction text as often as I can. It’s such a great way to integrate science and social studies into reading, since we all know how difficult it can be to fit everything into our school day.

I created this Nonfiction Fluency Roll & Read packet to add some excitement into their reading fluency practice.

This packet includes 40 science and social studies topics as well as a response sheet for your students to write about what they have learned.

These can be used in whole group, small group, partners, or as individuals. I like to place my students into partnerships, so they can listen to each other read. The students take turns rolling and reading the passage. I usually give them a number of times to roll or a time limit before they stop to write on their response page.

If you would like to check out this packet, click on the cover page below.