phonics

Making the Connection Between Phonemic Awareness and Phonics

November 1, 2020 by Jodi Leave a Comment

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.

You will need:

mini erasers, cubes, or some other type of manipulative in 4 different colors
Velcro circles or construction paper circles in the same 4 colors
Dry erase boards and markers
Free Download (included later in this post)

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.

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.

Could you see this working in your classroom?

Phonics Instruction Made Easy

November 17, 2019 by Jodi Leave a Comment

Phonics instruction is important because students have to know how to decode print in order to become fluent readers that can comprehend what they read. While decoding comes easily for some students, others need very direct and explicit instruction. Everyone, even your highest readers, need a good understanding of phonics. Once students start reading multisyllabic words, they need to be able to decode them easily. We even use phonetic skills as adults to decode unknown words. Think of all those medical terms or weird chemicals that we see on food labels. Phonetic decoding is truly a lifelong skill. For this reason, I make sure that I use a lot of explicit phonics instruction in my classroom.

I love having a variety of resources for each phonics skill at my fingertips to use each week. Sometimes, I use the same resources over and over each week, and sometimes I like to change it up a bit. I put a variety of my phonics resources into Megapacks organized by phonics skill, and it has made lesson planning so much easier each week.

These Megapacks include everything you need for teaching phonics all year long. The year-long bundle is jam-packed with phonics materials for 27 phonics skills that can be used for interventions, whole group instruction, small group instruction, independent work stations, partner activities, practice pages, and more. (Over 1,800 pages of phonics practice.)

This is the perfect setup for teaching your phonics skill for each week. Simply open the file and print exactly what you need. You will easily be able to integrate your phonics instruction into your reading comprehension and fluency instruction for the week.

Each phonics skill pack can also be purchased separately if you just need some updated resources for one particular phonics skill.

These Megapacks include materials from the following products in my store, but ALL in one place:

★ 5-Step Phonics

★ Phonics Based Fluency Passages {The Bundle}

★ Phonics Based Poems

★ Phonics Color by Code

★ Phonics Roll It! Color It!

★ Phonics Tic Tac Toe Games

★ Reading on the Move Phonics Word Lists

★ Short Vowel Intervention

Check out all of my Phonics Megapacks by clicking on the picture below.

Editable Word Work Activities

August 29, 2018 by Jodi Leave a Comment

Word Work is such an important skill to practice in the primary classroom. Word Work, or word study, is often considered “spelling practice” in classrooms. While word study does involve learning to spell words, it is not your traditional spelling practice of simply memorizing words for a spelling test. Word Work involves learning the patterns and meanings behind our written language. Whether or not you do “spelling” in your classroom is up to you and your school district. My district uses spelling words and gives spelling tests. My goal is to make them the most useful for my students. Instead of focusing on memorizing the spelling words each week, and then forgetting them right away, I want my students to understand the patterns in our spelling words. Our spelling words are related to our phonics skill for the week, plus a couple of high frequency words. We practice these words during our independent Word Work stations, in our whole group instruction, and small group instruction. I created these Editable Word Work activities to use each week with my students.

These Word Work Activities allow you to use ANY words that you would like for your students to practice. Your students can practice spelling words, sight words, or word families. The possibilities are endless. Simply type in your list of words and 12 Word Work Activities are automatically generated for you to use in whole group, small groups, independent word work centers, or homework. See how it works in the video below.

What are the Editable Word Work activities that are included?

There are 12 Word Work activities that can be used with 10 words and 12 of the same activities that can be used with 5 words. This allows for easy differentiation for your students who are not ready to work with more than 5 words at a time. You will find the following activities:
•Rainbow Write
•ABC Order
•Spin & Write
•Writing Sentences
•Using Different Tools
•Roll & Color
•Pyramid Writing
•Wiggle Writing
•Roll & Write
•Roll & Read
•Tic Tac Toe
•Secret Code Words
•Flash Cards

“This is a brilliant idea!! Type the list once and instantly get 12 differentiated activities. I can’t wait to use this in my classroom. This has to be one of my all time favorite downloads.” -Darlene

This is truly a huge time saver in my classroom because I can use any list that I want to use for my students. It is easy to differentiate for my students to work on sight words, word families, or spelling words. I also included activities that can be used with 10 or 5 words, which allows me to cut my word list in half for struggling students.

You can learn more about these Editable Word Work activities by clicking on the picture below.

Reading Warm Ups

March 31, 2018 by Jodi 1 Comment

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Digital Word Work

February 25, 2018 by Jodi 2 Comments

Teaching phonics is an essential skill for readers, but if it’s not jazzed up, it can be downright borrrring for kids. I absolutely LOVE teaching phonics. I enjoy seeing my students put the puzzle pieces of phonics together to make words and having it all make sense to them. Even my higher readers need to know and understand phonics skills. We talk a lot about how knowing the rules of phonics can help them with longer unknown words. Since phonics is such an important part of the 1st grade curriculum, I am constantly trying to find ways to make it more fun for my students.

A new component that I have added this year is Digital Word Work. We do not have iPads or tablets for our students, so I created something that we could do together using what we have. We have one computer and a projector, so I created a Digital Word Work Slideshow that can be projected while my students record their answers or interact with the slides.

What is included with Digital Word Work?

These Digital Word Work packets come with three separate files.

Digital Word Work without Timers – This includes a Power Point Slideshow that you will display and click through each section at your own pace to allow for all students to complete the activity.
Digital Word Work with Timers – This Power Point Show has timers, which allows you to walk around your classroom and help students where needed. This works well once your students have done these for a couple of weeks and know exactly what is expected.
Printable Recording Sheet- This includes a PDF that needs to be printed for each of your students. I print this 2-sided, so each student only needs one paper.

How do I use Digital Word Work?

I personally use the slideshow without timers. I have a huge range of learners in my classroom, and I want to make sure that I give my students an ample amount of time to complete the task. Plus, my goodness…we have a really hard time keeping track of our crayons in my classroom 🙂

I hand out the 2-sided recording sheet and have my students go ahead and get their crayons ready before we start. Then, I project the slideshow for the class. The first activity has the students looking at pictures and saying the phonics skill sound for each picture.

The second activity uses the recording sheet. A group of pictures are on the screen. The students have to write down the picture that shakes on the screen.

Students need their crayons for the third activity. They turn their recording sheets over and color the picture that matches the word on the screen.

The last activity gets the students up and moving. When a picture flashes on the screen that has the particular phonics skill that you are working on, the students have to stand up. If a picture appears that does not follow the skill, they stay seated.

These have been a great addition to our classroom. It’s just a fun twist on phonics each week.

Which phonics skills are included?

I have each phonics skill listed individually, but I also have bundles available. The Ultimate Bundle includes:

♥short a, e, i, o, & u ♥r blends ♥s blends ♥l blends ♥ending blends ♥sh digraph ♥th digraph ♥ch digraph ♥wh digraph ♥long a_e ♥long a (ai,ay) ♥long e ♥long i_e ♥long i (ie/igh) ♥long o_e ♥long o (oa, oe) ♥long u ♥ar ♥er,ir,ur ♥or ♥soft c/g ♥ou/ow ♥oi/oy ♥au/aw ♥oo/ew

Check out ALL of my Digital Word Work packets in my Teachers Pay Teachers Store.

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.