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What Is Phonemic Awareness? | Reading Lessons

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Lesson Plan

Grades

K - 2

Lesson Plan Type

Recurring Lesson

Estimated Time

Three 25-minute sessions

Lesson Author

Publisher

From Theory to Practice
OVERVIEW

In this phonemic awareness lesson designed for a first-grade classroom, students engage in games and chants to recognize the same sounds in different words. Students match objects with the same beginning or ending sound, identify whether a given sound occurs at the beginning or ending of a word, and connect phonemes with graphemes.
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FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE

Yopp, H.K., & Yopp, R.H. (2000). Supporting phonemic awareness development in the classroom. The Reading Teacher, 54, 130–143.
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Phonemic awareness, which is the awareness that speech consists of a sequence of sounds, should be a priority in early reading instruction.

Phonemic awareness instruction should provide students with "linguistic stimulation in the form of storytelling, word games, rhymes, and riddles."

Phonemic awareness instruction should move from rhyming words to smaller units of sound, and finally to individual phonemes

Phonemic awareness instruction can be strictly oral or may include some sort of concrete cue.

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Building Phonemic Awareness With Phoneme Isolation - ReadWriteThink

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ReadWriteThink couldn't publish all of this great content without literacy experts to write and review for us. If you've got lessons plans, videos, activities, or other ideas you'd like to contribute, we'd love to hear from you. Find the latest in professional publications, learn new techniques and strategies, and find out how you can connect with other literacy professionals.

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Young children need hands-on activities to learn, and literacy is no exception. Using ping pong balls when teaching word families certainly allows the children to get their hands busy! It's a great way for kids to get in some fine motor practice as they're learning about letters and words. It's also perfect for a ball theme, which is today's #PLAYfulpreschool focus.

Are you following Fun-A-Day's LITERACY Pinterest board?

What a fun way of teaching word families!

Materials Needed
Ping pong balls
Permanent marker
Styrofoam base
Golf tees

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Prep
Decide which word families to focus on first, then grab the permanent marker. Write one letter on each ping pong ball to correspond with the word families that will be taught.

Place the appropriate number of golf tees into the styrofoam base. Try to ensure they're spaced far enough apart so the ping pong balls don't touch. Since the word families I chose were just three letters, I just used three tees.

Directions
Call the child over and introduce the concept. For example, I might say, "Let's make some words with these ping pong balls!"

Since they ARE balls, the kiddo may want to throw or bounce them a little bit. I think that's a great warm up! Go over letter identification while tossing the balls back and forth. "Throw me the 'a'!" "Oh, I caught the 'g'!"

Place one word up on the golf tees, encouraging the child to help. "Let's make the word 'dig' together! I bet you can help me figure out which letters we need. Let's say 'dig' slowly. Hmmm, I hear the sound /d/ at the beginning. The letter 'd' says that sound! Let's find the letter 'd'!"

After making the first word, set out a few other balls with letters written on them. Make sure that the letters would work as part of the word family you're discussing. For example, with 'dig' I chose the letters r, b, and z to make more words with.

Explain how to change the word into another word. "We can change words we know into new words just by changing one letter! Let's change 'dig' into 'zig'. /Z/ is the sound I hear at the beginning of the word 'zig'. Which of these letters should be use next? Yes, the letter z! Let's take 'd' off of 'dig' and put the z at the beginning. It's not 'dig' anymore! Now it's 'zig'!" You can also touch on making new words by change the last letter!

Keep moving along with one word family, helping the child as needed. Model and think out loud as much as possible. This allowed the child to better understand the process. If you're so inclined, move onto another word family!

Additional ideas
Of course, the ping pong ball letters can be used for more than just teaching word families. They're great for letter identification, practicing letter sounds, letter matching, etc. Make names using the ping pong letters! Allow older children to practice spelling words with the letters. Use them on the golf tees or toss them around for a more active game. Lots of playful literacy fun!

How do you go about teaching word families? How would you and your kiddos use ping pong ball letters?

More from the #PLAYfulpreschool teachers -

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Teaching Word Families with Ping Pong Balls

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Young children need hands-on activities to learn, and literacy is no exception. Using ping pong balls when teaching word families certainly allows the children to get their hands busy! It's a great way for kids to get in some fine motor practice as they're learning about letters and words.

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Like I said in my last post, it is that time of year in Kindergarten when CVC words are crucial for your kids to start blending to develop their reading skills. As I introduce each letter to my kids, I add it to my blending board. I start building their blending skills at the beginning of the year even if it only starts with the letters they know or 2 sounds I have introduced. In this blog post, I will show you how to make your own blending board!

Our kiddos that come to us as emergent readers have ALOT of work to do to jump up reading levels before the end of the school year. CVC words are just the beginning of the phonics skills they will need to decode those tough words they will start to see as they get into level D books (Fountas & Pinnell levels). It is SO important to get them use to blending letters as they learn the sounds so that it just becomes second nature to them while reading.

As I introduce each letter, I add it to my board, so there are very few letters at the beginning. Depending on the order of letters you teach, the word they are able to read first will vary. The beginning of our order is C O A D G M L.... So some of the first words that my kids know how to read are cod, cad, gad, mag, lad, lag, etc. We practice blending daily using the I do it, We do it, You do it method:

I do it. (I point to each letter and make the sound then blend them all together to make the word) For example: /m/ /a/ g/ mag
We do it. (They do it with me)
You do it. (They do it by themselves and I only point)

The blending board is also GREAT for RTI kiddos. Letting them manipulate the cards and point to the cards themselves has some real power. Most of my RTI kids usually aren't even ready for blending the 3 phonemes, so I may stick to just 2 until they master that.

After teaching all the letters, I introduce digraphs and add them one by one to the board. By that point, they are blending like pros!

These are the cards that I use for my blending board. They include all vowels and consonants as well as the digraphs sh, ch, th, wh, and ph. Keep reading to see how I made my board!

UPDATE! I have now added beginning blends, magic e, vowel teams and nk and ng endings to these cards, along with EDITABLE pages to add any sound you want! 🙂

First you will need a binder like these I found on Amazon. I used a 1 inch binder.

Go ahead and put some of the letters on the rings so that you can see how far down they will hang and where you will need to fold the binder back.

Fold the binder back about an inch below where your letters hang. Binders are usually just cardboard inside so they can bend with a little force. 🙂

Next you will bend the other side so that the two sides meet up.

After bending both sides, it should sit up like this.

I used hot glue to glue the sides together.

And there you have it! Your blending board is ready to go! 🙂 I would recommend making a few for your classroom. You will want one for yourself, one if you have an aide or someone who pulls your students for RTI, and one for centers that your kids can use independently. The resource I mentioned above includes a recording sheet that can be used in a center for students to record the real and nonsense words they make with the blending board.

Another favorite way to teach CVC words is with hands-on centers. I like to use these as "Write the Room" and put the pictures around the room for students to write on their recording sheets. Answer Keys are included for self checking.

My kids also love using sound boxes with magnetic letters to practice blending. You can grab this FREEBIE by clicking the picture below!

That's all I've got for today! How do you teach blending!?

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CVC Words and Blending Board - The Primary Post

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This post contains affiliate links. Like I said in my last post, it is that time of year in Kindergarten when CVC words are crucial for your kids to start blending to develop their reading skills. As I introduce each letter to my kids, I add it to my blending board.

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This printable rhyming book will help kids understand the concept of rhyme. Kids see that the end of each word remains the same as they flip the pages....a powerful visual cue
Today I have a printable rhyming flipbook for you. This simple CVC book features the -at word family. It is easy to print, easy to assemble and will help you work on phonological awareness with your kids.

How to Assemble the Book

There are 5 pages in the printable document. You will see that everything is duplicated 4 times on each page. Let me show you how to make 4 books in a snap.

The first thing that I do with this little flip book is cut off the small word and pictures cards that print on the right side of the hat/h and bat/b pages. Set the word and picture cards to the side and I will tell you about them later.

I then put a complete set of pages in order. Start with the cover, the hat and bat pages (that you just made smaller), followed by the cat page and finally the tracing page.

Line the pages up nicely along the left side and place two staples in each book as shown.

Finally, you can separate the books by cutting along the dotted lines on the cover page. Tada......now you have 4 books in a snap!

Using the Rhyming Book

Kids can add their name to the cover of a book and each page provides a coloring opportunity. As you turn the pages, it is easy to see that the ending sound stays the same in each word. Talk about this. The visual cue will help your kids understand the concept of rhyme.

Encourage kids to place a finger on the dot below each letter as they sound out each letter in the featured word. Challenge kids to find the featured word in the simple sentence on the page. Read the sentence. Do they recognize any other words on the page?

A writing page has been added to give kids an opportunity to trace the word and write the word. I even added dots to indicate the starting points on each letter.

Remember those little word and picture cards that you cut off earlier? Kids can use them for a little matching activity. If you want, they can even glue them to the back of the book.

Download the Printable Rhyming Book

The -at family rhyming book is listed as a freebie in my TPT store. It is also part of a complete set of CVC flip books....which are also in my store. So, if you like this free sample book, you will love the complete set....it includes books for 17 word families. To get your free copy of the -at word family rhyming book click on the link below.
Free Printable Rhyming Flip Book
Are you looking for additional rhyming and/or CVC word family activities? Check out the following resources in my store:

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The Free Printable Rhyming Book That will Make Your Kids Flip

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This printable rhyming book will help kids understand the concept of rhyme. Kids see that the end of each word remains the same as they flip the pages....a powerful visual cue Today I have a printable rhyming flipbook for you. This simple CVC book features the -at word family.

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Phonemic Awareness: Rhymes | Worksheet | Education.com

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Rhyme time! Identifying and forming rhymes is an essential skill for young readers...and a fun one to practice! Have your students come up with a word that rhymes with each of the given words on this phonemic awareness worksheet.