Fun in First

A Teaching Blog by Jodi Southard

phonemic awareness

My Favorite Items for Phonemic Awareness

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Phonemic awareness plays a HUGE role in reading success.  Children that struggle with phonemic awareness have more difficulty with reading and writing.  In the younger grades, we have to make it a point to provide plenty of phonemic awareness instruction to our students.  I love using a variety of fun manipulatives while working on these skills.

The best manipulatives for phonemic awareness instruction.

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Here are a couple of my favorite manipulatives and how I use them with my Phonemic Awareness activities.

Slinkies

Slinky spring toys are great for giving students a visual to “stretching” through their words.  My students start by holding their Slinky together.  I give them a word and they stretch it out as they say each sound.  Then, they repeat the word and push the Slinky back together.

Pop-Its

These are easy to find EVERYWHERE right now.  Since my students are obsessed with these, I might as well use them for instruction.  Say a word and have the students push down a bubble for each sound that they hear.  You can also use these for counting syllables or words in sentences.

Magnetic Wands and Magnetic Chips

These are always one of my first go-to items when working on phonemic awareness skills.  I give each student a magnetic wand and 3-5 magnetic chips.  I say a word and the students pick up a chip as they say each sound in the word.

Unifix Cubes

Unifix cubes are a great tool to demonstrate building words with sounds.  Just like with the other items, cubes are a great manipulative for phonemic awareness.  Students can add a cube for each sound they hear in a word.  You could also use different colors for beginning, middle, and ending sounds.

 

Play-Doh

Have students make 3-4 small balls of Play-Doh.  Say a word and have students smash a ball as they say each sound in the word.  They LOVE this!

Mini-Erasers

Mini-erasers, or any other type of fun objects, make a great manipulative for students to use during phonemic awareness.  I use these with Sound Boxes (free download below).  Say a word and the students move an eraser into a box for each sound they hear in the word.  I love that you can keep this fresh by using seasonal erasers.

Download Sound Boxes and a Word List for FREE by clicking on the picture below.

FREE Download of Sound Boxes and a Word List to use during phonemic awareness instruction.

♥Need more Phonemic Awareness activities?  Check out Phonemic Awareness at Your Fingertips.

Phonemic awareness sets the foundation for efficient readers and writers. This packet includes everything you need to ensure that your students have strong phonemic awareness skills.

Making the Connection Between Phonemic Awareness and Phonics

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Teaching beginning readers is such a challenging job, but it is so rewarding to watch things start to click for our little readers.  Our students need to be able to make the connection between phonemic awareness and phonics.  Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate the sounds in a word, whereas phonics is the relationship between the sounds and letters.  With our young readers, we have to make sure to build a strong foundation with these beginning reading skills.

I wanted to share an easy and engaging activity for you to try with your students to help build that connection between phonemic awareness and phonics.

This post may contain some affiliate links.  Items purchased from these links do not cost you any extra money, but they do help to support this blog.

Help your students make the connection between phonemic awareness and phonics.

You will need:

Phonemic Awareness to Phonics Lesson

Place 4 colored circles on the floor next to each child.  (I used red, orange, yellow, and green.)  Give each child a dry erase board, a marker and eraser, and the 4 colored manipulatives.  (I used red, orange, yellow, and green mini-erasers.)

Project the slide show (free download at the end of this post) and have students stretch through the sound for the picture.  Then, they will stand up and jump onto a circle for each sound.

After they jump the sounds for each word, they will place an eraser, or other manipulative, on their dry erase board.  Then, they will write the corresponding letter for each sound.  It truly is an effective way for your students to make those connections between the sounds they hear and the letters to write.

Help your students make the connection between phonemic awareness and phonics.

If you’d like to download the FREE slideshow with the pictures that I used for the lesson, click on the picture below.  For more phonemic awareness activities, you may want to check out my Phonemic Awareness at your Fingertips packet.

Help your students make connections between phonemic awareness and phonics with this free slideshow.

Could you see this working in your classroom?

Reading Warm Ups

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Time spent in small reading groups is so important, and we have to make the most of our time while I have them at my reading table.  I like to start with some type of quick warm up to get their brains working before we get into our lesson.  I was constantly scrambling to come up with ideas, or I was stuck on doing the same things, so I came up with Reading Warm Up Cards.

Reading Warm Up Cards are a great way to begin your small group or whole group reading lessons. This set includes warm up cards for Phonological Awareness, Phonics, Vocabulary, Grammar, and Fluency (476 cards in all.) Simply print, laminate, and place on a metal ring.

These cards are full of quick reading warm ups that we can use in our small reading groups, as a whole group, or when we have a couple of extra minutes in our day.  They are also great to use before lining up for lunch or recess.  I printed, laminated, and placed each set on a metal ring.  This way, they are easy to grab and use.

Reading Warm Up Cards are a great way to begin your small group or whole group reading lessons. This set includes warm up cards for Phonological Awareness, Phonics, Vocabulary, Grammar, and Fluency (476 cards in all.) Simply print, laminate, and place on a metal ring.

I created five sets of Reading Warm Up Cards to reach many aspects of teaching reading and language arts; Phonological Awareness, Phonics, Vocabulary, Fluency, and Grammar.

Phonological Awareness is the ability of hear and manipulate sounds.  I like to remember that phonemic awareness can be done with your eyes closed.  It truly is the foundation for learning to read.  This set includes cards for Sentence Segmentation, Rhyming, Alliteration, Syllables, Onset & Rime, Phoneme Blending, Phoneme Segmentation, and Phoneme Manipulation. (48 Warm Up cards in all)

Reading Warm Up Cards are a great way to begin your small group or whole group reading lessons. This set includes warm up cards for Phonological Awareness, Phonics, Vocabulary, Grammar, and Fluency (476 cards in all.) Simply print, laminate, and place on a metal ring.

The Phonics Warm Up cards include 120 cards in all working on Letter Sounds, Short Vowels, Beginning Blends, Ending Blends, Digraphs, Long Vowels, R-Controlled Vowels, and Dipthongs.

Reading Warm Up Cards are a great way to begin your small group or whole group reading lessons. This set includes warm up cards for Phonological Awareness, Phonics, Vocabulary, Grammar, and Fluency (476 cards in all.) Simply print, laminate, and place on a metal ring.

The Vocabulary set includes 80 vocabulary warm ups.  These cards include a variety of vocabulary words as well as work with synonyms, antonyms, prefixes, and suffixes.

Reading Warm Up Cards are a great way to begin your small group or whole group reading lessons. This set includes warm up cards for Phonological Awareness, Phonics, Vocabulary, Grammar, and Fluency (476 cards in all.) Simply print, laminate, and place on a metal ring.

The Fluency Warm Ups include 124 fluency cards working on Letter Fluency, Sight Word Fluency, Short Vowel Fluency, Long Vowel Fluency, Blend and Digraph Fluency, R-Controlled and Diphthong Fluency, Expression, and Short Story Fluency.

Reading Warm Up Cards are a great way to begin your small group or whole group reading lessons. This set includes warm up cards for Phonological Awareness, Phonics, Vocabulary, Grammar, and Fluency (476 cards in all.) Simply print, laminate, and place on a metal ring.

Grammar Warm Ups include 104 cards working on Sentence Structure, Word Order, Sentence Fragments, Ending Marks, Nouns, Plural Nouns, Possessive Nouns, Proper Nouns, Irregular Plural Nouns, Verbs, Present-Tense Verbs, Past and Future Tense Verbs, Commas, Contractions, Adverbs, Combining Sentences, Adjectives, Pronouns, and Abbreviations.

Reading Warm Up Cards are a great way to begin your small group or whole group reading lessons. This set includes warm up cards for Phonological Awareness, Phonics, Vocabulary, Grammar, and Fluency (476 cards in all.) Simply print, laminate, and place on a metal ring.

I have also bundled all 5 sets, 476 Warm Up cards in all, which includes the Phonological Awareness, Phonics, Vocabulary, Fluency, and Grammar sets.  Click on the picture below to take a closer look and to download the preview files.

Reading Warm Up Cards are a great way to begin your small group or whole group reading lessons. This set includes warm up cards for Phonological Awareness, Phonics, Vocabulary, Grammar, and Fluency (476 cards in all.) Simply print, laminate, and place on a metal ring.

If you have any questions or comments, let me know.  I love hearing from you and knowing how things are going in your classrooms.

Reading Warm Up Cards are a great way to begin your small group or whole group reading lessons. This set includes warm up cards for Phonological Awareness, Phonics, Vocabulary, Grammar, and Fluency (476 cards in all.) Simply print, laminate, and place on a metal ring.

Small Group Phonemic Awareness Activities

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You may remember this post from last year where I shared this freebie with you:
Click on the picture above to download again for FREE

Many of you wondered what activities I placed in the folders behind each section.

 
Well, here is my first unit for this notebook.
This unit contains activities for each of the stages of phonemic awareness (sentence segmenting, rhyme and alliteration, blending and segmenting syllables, onset rime blending and segmentation, phoneme blending and segmentation, and phoneme deletion and manipulation.)
They are very easy to implement and need very little preparation.  These activities are perfect for small groups, but can also be used in whole group or individual settings.
 
You can check out this unit by clicking below.

 
Also, don’t forget to enter the Ultimate 1st Grade Common Core Giveaway.  The giveaway ends tonight.