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Elementary (Grades K-2) Lesson Plan Templates

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Find free Elementary (Grades K-2) teacher Lesson Plan Templates and resources for every curriculum.

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Are you on the hunt for high-quality English/Language Arts teaching resources? Well, look no further! This list of Teach Starter resources and widgets have not only been created by our team of teachers and professional designers, but they are all FREE!
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Alphabet and Spelling Resources

Writing Activity Sheets and Worksheets

Project these widgets in your classroom for writing activities:
Special Occasions Free Greeting Card Templates Page Borders and Writing Templates
Vocabulary Resources

Comprehension

Planners, Structuring, Proofing, and Editing
Narrative Persuasive Writing Additional Writing Resources
Poetry Resources

Reading Activities

Handwriting

Free Word Finds

Reading-Themed Banners, Bookmarks, and Displays

General English/Language Arts Teaching
and Lesson Planning Resources
Goal Setting, Reporting, and Feedback
You might also like to check out the following lists of free teaching resources:
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Free Primary School English Resources - Teach Starter

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Are you on the hunt for high-quality English/Language Arts teaching resources? Well, look no further! This list of Teach Starter resources and widgets have not only been created by our team of teachers and professional designers, but they are all FREE! Make your classroom buzz!

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There are many different places a teacher can look for good reading lesson plans. Teachers that come to class well-prepared can be confident about spending a productive hour with their students. Here are some reading activities and worksheets for kids that teachers can use to add fun to any reading lesson plan!

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May have to pay but amazing community for information and ideas

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Educator Edition | Lesson Planet's OER Discovery & Management Solution

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Save time lesson planning by exploring our library of educator reviews to over 550,000 open educational resources (OER).

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Resources for Teaching English-Language Learners

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From literacy instruction to arts and technology integration, explore strategies for engaging English-language learners.

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Second Grade Phonics Worksheets and Printables

Your second grade student will be wired for sound with these phonics worksheets. With phonics instruction, students are guided to recognize that letters have corresponding sounds. When second grade students are able to assign sounds to letters, they can form and decode words. These worksheets include topics such as beginning and ending blends, consonant blends, digraphs, and much more.

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2nd Grade Phonics Worksheets & Free Printables | Education.com

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Your second grade student will be wired for sound with these phonics worksheets. With phonics instruction, students are guided to recognize that letters have corresponding sounds. When second grade students are able to assign sounds to letters, they can form and decode words.

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Often parents fall into the thinking: "The school will teach my child everything they need to know! I'll leave it to them." Although it may feel better to not carry this burden, the burden will be shifted onto your child. Teachers need you on their team. They need your help practicing reading at home, building your child's confidence in their work, and giving your child the much needed practice all kids require to be strong readers.

How Many Changes Can You Make?

Give your child a "base" word, like

Then see how many ways your child can add a prefix or suffix to create a new

Prefixes are sets of letters that are added to the beginning of a word. A suffix is added to the end.

Find a Word Within a Word
If your child has a hard time reading long, unfamiliar words, help them out by showing them how to cover up part of the word to break it down into smaller chunks. For example, the word "cabinet". Cover up the "cabi" part so they can first read "net". Then cover up "net" so they can read "cab-i". Now put the sounds together.
We Love Reading!

Remember, we want children to develop a love of reading, so focus on reading the books they enjoy over and over again. Getting the practice and repetition of reading their favorite story will strengthen their reading skills.

Write a Word Ladder

Draw a simple ladder of two long lines and four rungs on a piece of paper. Using a red crayon write a short word like "ready" on the bottom rung. Then ask your child to think of more words that rhyme with "ready" and write them on each rung, climbing up the ladder using a different color crayon for fun. See how high your ladder will reach!

The H Brothers
Explain to your child that sometimes two letters will stand together to create one new sound. The "h brothers" join with other letters to make the sounds: sh, ch, th, wh and ph .
Th is can be confusing for kids, so make sure to write an example word and use gestures to help them remember the new letter combination.

Pick a Letter

Practicing phonics can feel tedious, so it's important to find ways to make it fun, simple and quick. Write three letters on a piece of scrap paper, for example b, n, and t. Have your child say each letter and its sound. Then ask, "What's the LAST letter you hear in 'run'?" Give them one point for each word they get right, and encourage them to try to earn five points.

Make a Smoothie "Blend"

2nd graders are reading more complicated words that contain letter "blends". A blend is when two or three letters come together to help words begin. 2nd graders are expected to learn the letter blends: str, tr, sw, st , sp, sn, sm, sl, sc, pl, gr, fl, dr, cr, cl, br, and bl.

Demonstrate this concept by blending together two or three flavors in a smoothie, such as strawberry, banana and vanilla.

Scavenger Hunt

If your child feels ready, get them excited to do a "blends" scavenger hunt. Give your child a piece of paper with one blend written on it. Have him or her say the sound the blend makes. Give your child a bag and give them five minutes to find objects that start with the blend that is on the paper. Give clues or suggestions if your child is struggling to identify objects. When time is up review the objects and award a point for each item found. Have your child teach a neighbor or friend for the next round.

Listen to Your Child Read Daily

Children need a lot of practice reading to reinforce phonics skills, so make a point to listen to them read every day.

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Second Grade Phonics Skills | 2nd Grade Phonics Activities

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Often parents fall into the thinking: "The school will teach my child everything they need to know! I'll leave it to them." Although it may feel better to not carry this burden, the burden will be shifted onto your child. Teachers need you on their team.

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Utilize Education.com's second grade writing lesson plans to help build your classroom's basic writing skills! Our lesson plans cover topics from punctuation, spelling, and more. In addition, our educator-approved lesson plans help foster a positive learning atmosphere where teachers will find their students continually building confidence in their writing abilities.

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Utilize Education.com's second grade writing lesson plans to help build your classroom's basic writing skills! Our lesson plans cover topics from punctuation, spelling, and more. In addition, our educator-approved lesson plans help foster a positive learning atmosphere where teachers will find their students continually building confidence in their writing abilities.

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TPSD Kindergarten, Phonics First, Lesson 16 Level 1

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Looking for some fresh phonics activities for your word study lessons?

I use a lot of word sorts in my word study lessons, and they're effective. But sometimes my kiddos and I get a little tired of sort after sort after sort. Can you relate? 🙂

In today's post, I'll share 5 phonics activities to try with your kindergarten, 1st, or 2nd grade students! I hope you find at least a couple of new ideas!
Photo Credits; Regreto, Shutterstock
1. Mystery Word

Have students place 5 - 10 words, on individual cards, on the table in front of them. (Have students use the words they are currently studying AND words they have studied in the past, for review.) Each student should have the same set of words.

The teacher chooses one word and gives clues about that word. Students may guess the word at any time, but I do not allow the children to guess after one clue (they have to wait to hear two or more clues).

When you give clues, make sure that they do not immediately reveal the "identity" of the word. For example, if you state that the word ends in -at, you'll want students to have several different words that end in -at.

Examples of clues:

"The mystery word starts with the digraph 'ch.'"

"The mystery word rhymes with 'pig.'"

"The mystery word has 2 syllables."

"The mystery word has a prefix."

Kindergarten teachers can modify this by giving students alphabet letters rather than words. You then give clues like, "This is the letter that starts the word 'hat'" or "This letter has two straight lines" or "This is the last letter in the word 'pin.'" You can eventually transition to having students work with complete words.

This activity can be done in a whole group or small group setting. Once students have played this game many times with your support, you can have them play it on their own-a student leader makes up the clues for a partner or small group!

2. Word Train

In this activity, students manipulate words and change out letters to make new words.

First, direct students to make a word (they should use their own magnetic letters or letter tiles). After students have made it correctly, have them write it on the first car in their train.

Next, either show or ask students how they can change that word to form a new word. Once students have formed the new word with their magnetic letters or tiles, have them write it on the train.

Continue until the train is "full." Praise students for their work in changing the first word to a completely different word.

If you'd like this train template, you can get it for free here:

You can make the activity even more challenging (and assign it as independent work) by writing the first and last word on the train. Students have to figure out how to get from the first word to the last word!

3. Making Words

This activity was developed by Patricia Cunningham (1992). I'm going to share a basic outline of her activity, but there are other variations and extension activities that you can read about in one of her books, like this one.

To prepare for the activity, the teacher chooses a "secret word" (something related to a topic you've been studying, if possible). The teacher displays the letters in the word in a mixed-up order. Students should also have their own paper letter tiles with matching letters to manipulate.

The teacher directs students to make a 2-letter word, with her help (or a 3-letter word, if no 2-letter words are possible).

Continue guiding students in making words by giving directions like "Change the first letter to an S" or "Mix up the letters to make a different word." As you go, increase the number of letters in the words students make.

Have students try to figure out the "big" secret word. If they are not able to, give them clues to help.

Students can then do follow-up activities like practicing sorting the words they made, comparing and contrasting words, looking for words that rhyme, etc.

Again, this can be done in a whole group or small group setting. Students can eventually do "Making Words" activities and variations on their own (as independent work, they can repeat the same "Making Words" activity you did with them, but without your support).

4. Dictation

This one is not quite as game-like as numbers 1-3. But it can still be fun AND is an extremely valuable phonics activity. It also allows you to see how students are doing with applying phonics / word learning to their writing.

The way you structure the dictation activity will depend on students' ages and abilities. In general, you might try something like this:

1. Choose a sentence that includes ONLY words that students have been learning how to spell (CVCe words with the long i, for instance) and sight words.

2. Say the sentence aloud to students: "I like my bike."

3. Then, say, "Write 'I.'" Have students write the word.

4. "Write 'like.'" (If necessary, comment on the long i sound, and help students segment it if necessary.) Have students write the word.

5. Repeat for the remaining words in the sentence. Note: In kindergarten and first grade (and sometimes 2nd), I almost always dictate the sentence word-by-word. I want students' focus to be on using their phonics knowledge rather than trying to remember a sentence. If necessary, I will remind them to space, use capital letters, and punctuation. Although I can discuss these skills during the lesson, I try to stay focused on the phonics patterns (since that is the point of this type of dictation).

6. Have students reread their sentences. Discuss word features.

In kindergarten, I start with single-word dictations, and then we eventually move into very simple sentences. You can incorporate sound boxes or have students "tap out" words to support them with segmenting during the dictation.

Ways to make dictation fun:

Make up sentences about your students and/or classroom. (You may have to tell them how to spell a word if it doesn't fit the patterns students have been studying, but the enjoyment they get from relevant sentences will make it worth it.)

Make up silly sentences.

Allow students to choose a word they've been studying. Then, you come up with a sentence that uses that word (but is still phonics-controlled).

5. Real or Nonsense?

This activity is very flexible, open-ended, and can be adapted for any level.

To prepare, choose letters, chunks, or syllables students have been studying and place them on index cards or small pieces of paper.

You can either A) fold up the cards and place them into a bag or jar, or B) give each student a set of the cards to place on the table in front of them.

With option A, students reach into the bag/jar and take out two pieces of paper. They manipulate the word parts to try to make a word. They record the word(s) they can make, writing them into the "Real" or "Nonsense" categories.

With option B, you can direct students in finding specific letters, chunks, or syllables ("Find the chunk 'ing' and the letter S"). With your guidance, students form real and nonsense words.

This makes a great small-group activity because you can discuss the meanings of words too. Students can sort the words in other ways, beyond "real" and "nonsense."

Conclusions

I hope you got at least one new idea for your phonics instruction!

If you're looking for more activities that your students can do independently, check out my word work resources for K, 1st, and 2nd grade.

References

Blevins, W. (2017). A Fresh Look at Phonics, Grades K-2. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Cunningham, P.M., & Cunningham, J.W. (1992). Making words: Enhancing the invented spelling-decoding connection. The Reading Teacher, 46, 106-107.

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5 Phonics Activities to Keep Word Study Interesting (for K-2) - Learning at the Primary Pond

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Looking for some fresh phonics activities for your word study lessons? I use a lot of word sorts in my word study lessons, and they're effective. But sometimes my kiddos and I get a little tired of sort after sort after sort. Can you relate?