Fun in First

A Teaching Blog by Jodi Southard

phonemic awareness

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.

Last Week Wrap Up…Phonemic Awareness, Daily 5, and More

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Eventually, I will try to get back to blogging more than just once a week, but the whirlwind of back to school just hasn’t died down yet and I feel like I can’t keep up.
For one, my husband and I ran in a half marathon yesterday, so we have been training for that, which is so time consuming.  I’m envious of people that can run for long periods of time.  I feel like my knees are 80 years old.  It was a lot of fun though and I’m so glad we were able to do this together.
My girls also started dance.  They absolutely LOVE it and they are so darn cute!
 Along with gymnastics classes, this leaves us with Tuesday evenings being our only free night.
 
Anyways, back to our week at school.  My students are doing great with their Daily 5 stations.  We are going strong with Read to Self, Work on Writing, and Read to Someone.  This week I introduced Word Work, so we are almost there.
 
We have also been adding to our CAFE board.  One of the first strategies I taught was “Check for Understanding.”  We have been discussing how to stop while you are reading to make sure you understand the story.  I have this Comprehension Stop Sign on a ruler that I hold up when we check to make sure we are understanding.
 
The students use these bookmarks during Read to Someone to help them check for understanding as well.
You can download both of these by clicking HERE.
 
Since our Daily 5 stations are going so well, my DIBELS testing is finished, and I have had a chance to determine each of my students reading level, I have started pulling small groups.  We started working on Phonemic Awareness this week. 

Some of my students will need to continue working on phonemic awareness skills, but many of them have a very good understanding of these skills.  We will be doing many of the activities in my Phonemic Awareness packet.
 
Last week, I posted a picture of a shirt on my FB and Instagram page.  I have had many people ask where to order this shirt.
You can find this shirt and SO many others by clicking on the image below.  The shirts are great quality and there are so many to choose from.

teachershirts.com logo
 
I hope you had a great weekend!

Favorite Pins Friday & Guided Reading Chapter 3

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This post is going to serve dual purposes.  First, I wanted to link up for this fun new linky party.
I am obsessed with Pinterest!  Here are some of my favorite pins from last week.
I thought this one was VERY appropriate to start.

We will be doing a “Hollywood” theme at school this year so I have been pinning “Hollywood” ideas like crazy.
Click on the picture above to go to the website.
 
One of my favorite boards is my Education Inspiration board.  I love the look of this guided reading area.   
Click on the picture above to go to the website.
 
I also loved this idea from Cupcake for the Teacher.
 
I am also a huge fan of Pinterest for inspiration for my home.  I have a really small sunroom that I want to turn into my office, so I’ve been pinning some small office ideas. 

 
Then of course, there is always some “dream” pinning.
 
I also wanted to link up for The Next Step in Guided Reading Chapter 3 discussion.
 
This chapter discussed Pre-A and Emergent Readers.  As a first grade teacher, I do still get some students every year that fit into these categories.  These students still need to practice writing their letters and names, working with sounds, and doing a lot of interactive writing.
I use the activities from my Phonemic Awareness unit with my Pre-A and Emergent Readers.
 
 
Here are my kids playing Rhyming Memory and Move the Sound. {And, yes…they were still in their pajamas and eating breakfast while we were playing.}

 
The important thing to remember about phonemic awareness is that it does NOT involve knowledge of letters.  It is strictly hearing the sounds in words.
You will find SO many amazing resources from these blogs:
 

 
 
 
 

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.