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this activity provides students a way to make a fun activity beneficial and learn sight words. this activity requires students to match the sound with a picture. for example, a picrure of glasses will fit a puzzle piece with the letters gl on it. This will help the students be able to provide a puzzle for me to look at and be able to correct and help the students until they are able to move onto the next set of sounds.

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Phonics is the back bone of almost all reading instruction. As a teacher of young primary students, we spend countless hours of the school year teaching phonics skills. We've come up with some fun phonics activities and resources you can add to your large phonics instruction toolbox.

Letter Identification

Make a Match - Using a die cut machine, create 26 pairs of objects and write the uppercase and lowercase of each letter of the alphabet. Students can play in pairs or groups to "make matches".

Pancake Flip - Cut out 5-10 brown circles and write the letters that you are currently working on in class (may want to do 3-4 circles for each letter). Using a spatula, students "flip" over the circles and say the letter name.

Letter Game Board - Print out a couple of free game board templates. Fill in the blank spaces with letters that you are working on. Find a die and a couple of cubes or other math manipulative items and students can play a letter identification game.

Play Dough Mats - Give your tactile students a chance to roll out play dough and model the letters of the alphabet. We have a great center with the mats already created, and they also have a chance to practice writing the letters. Just print, laminate and go!

Adding Consonant/Vowel Sounds

Picture Sorting Mats - using picture cards that you have on hand, create sorting mats for the letter sounds you are studying. Students will sort pictures that begin (or end) with that particular letter sound. We have a set of Picture Sorting Mats for you!

Roll a Word - Have students sit in a circle. Using the letter sounds you are currently working on, flip over a letter card. You start with the ball and roll it to a student who has to say a word that begins with that sound. They then roll the ball to a new student who says another word and so on. When they can no longer come up with words, move on to a new letter sound. This is a great activity to do outside if weather permits!

Magazine/Newspaper Ad Scavenger Hunt - Students will go through old magazines and newspapers, searching for pictures that begin with a given letter sound.

Letter/Sound Crowns - We have all the letters on these lovely crowns! Students can identify the letter by circling it, practice writing it, and identify pictures that begin with that sound. They also get to wear their hard work home on their head with pride!

CVC Words

Building Word Mats - Begin with a variety of CVC picture cards. Students flip over a picture card and using foam letters or magnetic letters, they build the CVC word. Lastly, they have to record the word either on a recording sheet, or on a whiteboard.

Spoon Match Word Families - Using plastic spoons and note cards, write a variety of beginning consonant sounds on the back of the plastic spoons and word families on the note cards. Students grab a word family, lay it down and then continue grabbing spoons to create words. They are only to record the "real" words on their paper. 😉

Mixed Up CVC Packages - Write a variety of CVC words on sentence strips. (I use colored strips, so that students can keep the pieces in the correct containers.) Cut the letters in each word apart and put each word in a separate container. (plastic snack bags, baby food containers, envelopes, eggs, or any other small container you may have on hand) Students will open one container at a time and put the word together, then record it on their accountability page.

CVC Puzzles - Here is a quick resource that we have already created where students can match the puzzle pieces to build CVC words using pictures. It is ready to go... just copy, laminate and cut apart. (I recommend copying each word family on a different color, so students are easily able to sort them apart.)

Blends (Beginning/Ending)

Beginning Blends Crowns - Just like the letter/sound crowns from above, we also have a set of crowns specific to beginning blends. Students are able to practice writing the blend and identifying pictures that begin with that particular blend.

Ending Blend Detectives - Students can "Write the Room" by using a recording sheet and ending blend cards that you place around the classroom. Write the ending blends on separate note cards (-mp, -st, -ft, -sk, -nd, -nk). I would recommend making at least two cards of each blend, so that students are more spread out. Give them a chart with the blends along the top. When they find a "blend card", they record at least one word with that blend, then move on to look for another card.

Roll a Beginning Blend - Using cubes (I like to use dry erase cubes), write a beginning blend on each cube face. As students roll and come up with a blend, they will need to write down a word with that blend.

Ending Blend Write and Wipe Cards - This is a quick to use resource that we have already created. Students identify and circle the correct ending blend using the picture clue. Then they practice writing the word on the line below. Copy, laminate, and cut all for only $2.00!!!

Beginning Blend Puzzles - With this fun and easy center, students connect pictures that begin with a certain beginning blend to the blend itself. Once the puzzle is complete, the students practice tracing that particular blend. You can always take this center a step further and have your students try to write the words that correspond to the pictures in each puzzle.

Sight Words

So I know that many sight words don't follow any Phonics rules (which is so hard for our emergent readers to understand). Nevertheless, they are an integral part of reading instruction, so am adding a few learning activities for sight words also. 😉

HFW Memory - Make some die cut shapes, or use calendar cut-outs and write pairs of sight words on them. (I recommend choosing about 10 words that your class is currently working on.) The students lay the shapes word side down and playing with a partner, they try to make matches with the sight words. In order to keep the pair of words, they have to be READ CORRECTLY.

Build, Write, Read - Create a Power Point that has at least 10 sight words. Put one sight word on each slide. Students will have magnetic, foam, or plastic letters to "build" the sight word they see. Then, they "write" the word either on paper or a whiteboard. Lastly, they "read" the word aloud. This can be a center or whole group activity.

Partner Poster Words - On a large piece of chart paper, write a variety of sight words. Then, leave a pointer stick by the chart paper for students to practice playing "teacher" with a partner. While working with a partner, one student will point to the words while the other reads them. They would then switch jobs and play again.

Sight Word Paint/Practice - These are great sheets for your students to use as added practice! Students get to practice reading, tracing, and writing each of the first 300 sight words on the Fry's list. There is also a fun spot where students can use Q-tips and paint to "dot" each word! It's a fun and engaging resource!

Fluency

Finally, you can tie all of these components together when practicing fluency. Here are a few items you can use to practice.

Leveled Readers - Have your students practice their differentiated readers as often as possible. The more opportunities they have to read the same text, the more fluent they will become. When they aren't having to work on decoding words, they can add voices to text and bring the story to life.

Fluency Passages - We offer a wide variety of fluency passages based on different phonics skills. Students have recording boxes on the bottom of each page to record how many words they read in one minute and how many, if any, errors they make. These are great to either use in class so students can track their progress, or send home for weekly fluency homework.

Comprehension Sticks - On large popsicle sticks, write a variety of generic comprehension questions. (Who are the main characters? What is the problem in the story? How would you change the ending of the story?) During centers, place the cup of sticks, and when students are done reading a story, they can pull a stick or two and write out their responses to the questions.

-Written by Janessa Fletcher
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Smileys to Color Each Time a Passage is Read

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2 Fill in the Blank Questions

1 Short Answer Question

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Phonics is the back bone of almost all reading instruction. As a teacher of young primary students, we spend countless hours of the school year teaching phonics skills. We've come up with some fun phonics activities and resources you can add to your large phonics instruction toolbox.

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Resources for teachers are as important for the students as they are to the teachers. some teachers love to teach and arent so well with designing or putting together posters. resources like this that provide teachers with free print outs not only saves the teachers time but also money. it also provides teachers with extra time to help students because they get to provide more visuals to present to the students.

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Written by Holly (Teach Starter)

How to teach phonics to children and develop their phonemic awareness is a crucial element of any classroom. As teachers, we all know that a child's phonemic awareness is highly linked to their success in beginning to read. However, the English language system is one of the hardest to teach and learn, and it's no wonder why! There are 26 letters that create approximately 44 phonemes. These phonemes can be written in over 120 different letter combinations (graphemes). For example, the sound /f/ can be made using the letter combinations 'ph', 'f', 'gh' and 'ff'.
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Whether you use a whole school phonemic program or you have your own way of teaching phonics, here are a number hints and tips that will ensure your classroom phonics program is the best it can be for your students.

Use Phonics Vocabulary with your Students

You may be a beginning teacher, or perhaps you are an experienced teacher. How do you teach a class of eager 7-year-olds about digraphs, trigraphs and diphthongs? Whether you're in your 1st or your 20th year of teaching, it is crucial that you have a grasp of the phonics terms and a solid understanding of their definitions.

Use this terminology during your phonics lessons with your students. Display the words in your classroom so that it becomes part of the vocabulary used by you and your students during your lessons.

For more information about the different terms, read our blog "A Guide to the English Language System".

Our set of 9 Phonics Vocabulary posters are the perfect display for your classroom.

Blending and Segmenting Words

Having the ability to segment and stretch out words can be super tricky for young minds to work out. Providing your students with some kinesthetic and visual learning opportunities so that they can make that connection between the phonemes is a fantastic way to build up your students' phonemic awareness.

First of all, what is segmenting a word? It is the process of breaking a word apart into its individual sounds (phonemes). Often we use the word 'stretch' to give the visual representation that you are stretching out the sounds in words.

Here are some fun activities to use during small group work to help your students segment phonemes in words.

Phonics Bead Slides

When talking with your students about segmenting a word into its sounds (phonemes), providing them with some extra kinesthetic support can support all children. These kinaesthetic activities work in both small groups and as a whole class. For example, you may ask the students to segment the word 'pin'. As they break up the sounds they move a bead for each sound, so 'p-i-n', they would move three beads across.

You may like to use this as a morning routine. Pick 10 words to get the students really consolidating how to segment words into phonemes.

Tap it Out - Phonics Lights

Kids love switching things on and off. So, why not incorporate it into your phonics instruction? You can buy these LED lights rather inexpensively at discount stores.

During a small group activity, provide the children with some simple CVC flashcards, the students have to tap out the different phonemes in each of the words.

Here are some of our CVC flashcards that will work for this activity:

To extend your students, get them to write the word after they have segmented it into its phonemes.

Phonics Station in your English Rotation

By including a phonics station in your English rotations, you can include hands-on phonics activities suitable to the varying ability groups in your class.

This will support your phonics program by adding extra revision and consolidation of graphemes.

We have a variety of fun, hands-on activities that can be incorporated into your phonics station:

Articulate the Sounds (Phonemes) Clearly

When you are explicitly teaching different phonemes, make sure you are pronouncing them clearly and accurately. The correct pronunciation of single phonemes is the ultimate key to phonics instruction and the blending of words. Sometimes when we are pronouncing a single phoneme, we have a tendency to over-emphasize the sound incorrectly or add 'uh' to the ends.

For example, the sound /s/ is 'ssss' not 'suh' or /p/ is not 'puh'. Basically, try to make the smallest unit of sound for each sound.

Here are some examples of the correct articulation of phonemes.

Phonics Treasure Box

Given that you can spell the 44 phonemes in 120 different letter combinations, you will often have a student think of a word that has the correct phoneme however incorrect grapheme (letter combination). For example, you may be looking at the 'oa' grapheme as in boat and ask students for other words that have that contain that digraph, a student may suggest 'snow'. Instead of saying "No, that is not correct", tell them that yes, the word snow does have the /oa/ sound (phoneme) but it has a different digraph.

Write the word 'snow' on a piece of card and put it in a 'Phonics Treasure Box' to use later when learning about the /ow/ diagraph!

This empowers your students to feel like they are on the right track with the phoneme and encourages them to keep on trying.

Introduce a Phonics Puppet

I know it sounds silly, but allocating a puppet as the phonics puppet is a surprisingly beneficial tool to include in any phonics program. The puppet becomes something that the students associate with learning about phonics. The puppet says the phonemes and learns along with the kids!

This is Ollie the Owl who loves words that have start with 'O'.

Phonics Anchor Charts

Along with other displays, creating anchor charts to help your students keep track of the multiple layers of phonics is another fantastic teaching tool to include in your phonics program. There is something about students watching you create this fantastic and creative anchor chart and displaying it in the classroom. Anchor charts engage and hook students at the beginning of a lesson.

The gorgeous anchor charts below are a mixture of interactive and fun! These are a great way to start your lesson when learning about these different graphemes.
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25 Tips and Printable Resources for Teaching Phonics

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Written by Holly (Teach Starter) How to teach phonics to children and develop their phonemic awareness is a crucial element of any classroom. As teachers, we all know that a child's phonemic awareness is highly linked to their success in beginning to read.

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this app caught my attention because it is offered in thirteen different languages. i think this is important because some students are english learners and an app like this could be a defining point learning english and the sounds of english. an app like this can be used in a class with multiple english learners and they dont have to feel "different" because everyone could benefit from the app itself.

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Our games encourage children to practice their knowledge of letters. Once your child has mastered letters and phonics, you can then challenge them to put their knowledge into practice by playing our spelling for kids game. Apple starts with A, what's the next letter?

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Spelling words can enhance their ability to recognize letters and their sounds. We have three-letter words that children can start to spell. And as they progress through the game, they can proceed to spell longer words, such as elephant and tortoise.

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Spelling for Kids: Broaden Your Kids Vocabulary with Zoolingo - Zoolingo

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With Zoolingo, you can help your child find fun ways to enjoy learning. Supercharge Your Child's Early Development Stage for Free (Additional Levels Available Through In-App Subscription). Zoolingo is a smart app for kids that makes teaching kids with autism and special needs easier!

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a pocket chart with photos and words to relate to those photos is a great way for students to watch the teacher spell out words and visualise the word along with the photo. I think at a yound age its important for students to see and hear what they are learning because they not only are just beginning to learn these topics but also discovering the type of learner they are.

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Short A is usually the first phonics sound you teach in kindergarten and first grade so I figured it'd be a great sound to show you teaching ideas and resources for!

I constantly get asked, "What do you have for [insert phonics sound here]??" in emails and questions on my TpT store so I thought it'd be fun to SHOW you! :)

Not to worry if you're already done with short a - all of these ideas and activities you could do with other phonics sounds and most of the resources I share I also have for the other phonics sounds as well!

This is a long post but it's filled with pictures and I promise if you read through it, you'll find great ideas and some awesome FREE stuff along the way too!

So the first thing I want to talk about are these pocket chart cards. I LOVE them because they can be used for so many different things! There are 39 different cards for short a alone so it's lots of practice!

My favorite thing is to use them as a pocket chart center. Put them in a pocket chart and have students build the words with the letter cards that are also included in the pack.

Students just grab a word card and build it with the letter cards. The vowels come in red like this or in black. If you want to make the center a little more challenging, you can easily just snip the words off the bottom to make them picture-only cards for students to figure out how to spell. For that activity, I'd put only the letters they need in the center so it's self-checking! :)

Can we just talk about my pocket chart for a second though?? I'm sort of obsessed with my monster pocket chart center.

I couldn't get a good picture of it - the lighting made it look faded green for the picture but it's bright neon lime in person with a glittery green mouth, big white teeth, and giant googly eyes! I promise it's actually cute in person. I wish I could get a better picture of the area! Basically... it's a big monster with a pocket chart in his mouth :)

I found this fun furry monster rug that's teal with lime and hot pink furry strands that stick out. Then I also fell in love with this little stuffed monster guy who's mouth is actually a front pocket so it's perfect for keeping the teaching pointer in but I wanted to show you that too. I wrapped a finger pointer in a green boa to make a monster arm for pointing to the pocket chart with!

Then I found these cute little monster buckets for only a dollar each that I put the pocket chart center materials in!

Anyways! Back to the pocket chart center cards I was talking about...

There are a ton of them and you can do SO MUCH with them!

You can use the sorting headers that come with the cards to make this a great sorting pocket chart center where they sort the picture cards by word family.

Or you can have them sort horizontally...

Another thing I like to do with the picture cards that kiddos love is building the words with magnet letters. Any time you tell them they can use the whiteboard (or whiteboard easel), you are immediately crowned the BEST TEACHER EVER... or at least for an hour. I know I say that about a lot of things but hey, a lot of things impress them. Use pretzel sticks instead of base ten blocks or go to recess 5 minutes early or let them use smelly markers and you're queen for the day. It's the little things. :)

Let them pick out cards and build the words with magnet letters on the whiteboard.

If you'd rather students stay at their seats during centers, you can also easily use a magnetic cookie sheet from the dollar store that are perfectly lap sized for students to put the cards on and build with magnet letters in their lap.

You can also just let students take the cards and a blank sheet of copy paper and STAMP them. Stamps are always an engaging activity! I LOVE these alphabet stamps because the letters are perfectly primary.

You can also put them around the room and have students find them and write them on a piece of paper. I call that activity "Find and Write" - super easy. Use that tack putty stuff to hang them on walls- it doesn't leave a mark and goes on/comes off easy and you can peel it off and reuse it.. I love it! So all you do is put the cards around the room, tell kids how many there are, have them grab a piece of paper and a clipboard, and have them search for them and hunt for them all. Fun, easy practice that gets them up and moving!

I also LOVE sand writing!! You can get colored sand really cheap at craft stores. Fill a pencil box with it for easy storage and have students put a card at the top and trace the word in the sand while saying the sounds in the word.

To make them a quick and easy matching center, snip the bottoms off and have them match the picture to the words as a little small group activity or literacy center.

You can also laminate them and put them on a binder ring so students can grab it any time they need for help writing or spelling or just to practice reading the words.

I like to put them on hooks so you can just grab the sound you want words for and take them to your seat or the writing center.

Speaking of the writing center, here's my little writing center! It's tiny and not too fancy but I like it. The "Writing Center" sign I just stole the letter headers from my black and white polka dots with pink trim word wall set - I have them in other styles/colors too but this is the pink & lime corner so I did pink :) - I like to take the letter headers from them to use to label stuff because I'm lazy and I like designing my own letters so they all match and aren't as huge as the ones you buy. ANYWAY!

As you can see, there are writing materials and a Short A words chart for students to use for writing inspiration and for correct spelling of the short a words. The short a word chart is in my short A no prep pack - I have one for each phonics sound in the no prep pack it comes in.

I just throw them all in an upside down binder in sheet protectors and flip to the sound that week. It's nice because kids can flip through if they want a different word that makes a different sound. Since they're black and white, you can also print one for each kid to color themselves and keep in their writing folder for reference.

I also throw my Themed Writing Charts in the binder for fun word choices by theme. They come in color & black/white too but I throw the color ones in there because I think the color helps spark the imagination :) They have fun themes like ocean words, bugs, farm animals, zoo animals, nature words, home and family words, foods, color words, etc.!

Other fun sheets in the writing center are these writing helper sheets that have the short a words on the side. They're also included in my no prep packs or I have them in a year set with all the phonics sounds. I recommend the Phonics No Prep Mega Bundle of all the phonics packs bundled instead but if you just want these writing sheets, they're in that year set I linked above. Please note that the phonics no prep mega bundle doesn't include the hands-on centers - if you want those, they're in the Short Vowels Ultimate Bundle!

As you can see, there is the one drawing box and writing lines option to write a story using the short a words on the side OR a version that has 3 different boxes each with its own set of writing lines which is good for your lower students or just for individual sentence writing practice.

There are TONS of other pages in my Short A Worksheets and Activities NO PREP pack as well - it has over 45 fun and differentiated worksheets and activities that are no prep - you can just print them and hand them to your students... which, let's be real, is such a plus. Teachers spend so much time prepping and anything you can just get and immediately use without any cutting/laminating/thinking is a dream come true. I have them for pretty much every phonics sound and the activities are consistent so once you explain them once, they can do them all year and all that changes is the phonics skill they focus on so students can spend all their cognitive energy on practicing that sound rather than how to do the activity.

As I say in this blog over and over, differentiating for all students - both low students AND high students - is really important to me so I try to include the same activities in different levels as much as possible.

For example, for these "Write the Word" worksheets, you could give your on level kids the sheet on the left and your higher kids the sheet on the right. You could also start with the easier and move on to the harder one if/when your students are ready.

Another example are these worksheets where your low kids do the sheet where they just have to trace the word and write it, your on level kids figure out the beginning sound then write the word, and your high kids have to figure out the beginning and ending sound to figure out the word.

There are a lot of great worksheets to challenge your higher kids that are fun for everyone too!

A few of my favorites....

Students put a paperclip on the spinner, put their pencil in the middle, and flick it to land on the word family to add to the next letter. They write it and if it makes a real word, they circle it!

Students start at the shaded box and read the short A words to go through the maze to figure out the sentence that matches the picture. It is SO FUN and one of my absolute favorites.

Crossword puzzles are also one of my favorites! You may be thinking it's too difficult but students are motivated to figure it out so they do! They just look at the picture and find the word that it is and write it in the boxes!

My Secret Word activity is also a popular one. You can get a few free ones for short a here. They're a little different than the one in the no prep pack (I used a different font for the letters they use).

Students look at the pictures and build each word. Then, for the 4th picture, they unscramble the letters they have leftover to figure out the secret word! Then, they build it and draw/color it.

To differentiate for your struggling students, I recommend a lot of word family practice and pictures to aid their understanding.

These are the steps I recommend following for your struggling students (or to scaffold for the class in general):

Start with JUST pictures first to help them hear the sounds in the words like -at in CAT.

Examples of this would be coloring by word family:

Or sorting pictures by word family:

Then add the task of matching pictures to words:

Each one of these focuses on only 2 word families at a time so it's not too overwhelming. Then there's one that practices all families together as a review.

NEXT, practice simply finding those words in sentences.

For circle and sort, they find the words in the sentences that belong in certain short a word families. These are great because even your non-readers are finding the words in context and sorting them. I recommend having them circle the words from each family in a different color using markers and writing them in that color at the bottom like I did. The color coding really helps them see it. After they circle and sort, they can try to read their sentences!

Now that they are ready for sentences, I recommend practicing them at a very basic level.

These are simple for your low students to feel successful writing their own sentences by first tracing it then rewriting it on the lines. The picture on the side will help them decode the sentence when they read it. It's a great confidence booster that practices both reading and writing short a words in real sentences which can be important for your reluctant readers and writers.

When you feel like they can move on to sentences, the picture matching cut and paste activities can be really helpful because they read the sentences and find the picture that matches. If they have trouble reading a word, the picture can give them clues so that makes it helpful. They simply glue it to the sentence that matches. :)

As you can see, you can step-by-step get them there! They may take longer but every student CAN do it. That is something I have always firmly believed.

Like I said, you can grab all these pages in my Short A Worksheets & Activities NO PREP Pack!

Alright, now for more of the FUN STUFF.....

One of my favorite centers is SECRET CVC Words!

You may remember my blog post about my Secret Sight Words....

People told me how much they loved the sight words ones so I made them for various phonics sounds like CVC words, CVCe words, beginning blends, vowel teams, etc. and these are the CVC ones!

I LOVE them because kids get to be word detectives while also practicing reading CVC words AND practicing their beginning sounds. Students look at the picture to figure out its beginning sound and put their letter magnet underneath it. They do this for each picture until they spell the secret CVC word.

I actually love using bottle caps that I write letters on with a permanent marker because it's cheap, easy, and I don't care if letters get lost.

You can also laminate them and write on them with dry erase markers!

For an extra challenge, I also make a sign language version of this center! This is great for your students who need an extra challenge because they're practicing their words and technically learning a new language... your high kids will eat. this. up.

I include a Sign Language Alphabet chart in both color and black and white for students to reference as well. They'll have a lot of fun signing their names and friends' names and words around the room when they're done - trust me, you'll catch them :)

Speaking of names, I actually make these cards CUSTOM for the kids' names in your class too in case you didn't know! I LOVE making them and seeing all of the unique names around the country/world. You can order your class list's names here if you want them. After you order, you just send me a list of your kids' first names (up to 30). Any time you get a new student, just send me an email and I'll add it for you if you haven't used up your 30 names. You also get access to ALL of the names - I add all of the names teachers have ordered to the file alphabetized and hyperlinked so you can easily see if any of your students' names are already included to use less of your 30. You have up to a year from date of purchase to use all your names but you can always re-download the file to see what new names have been added... there are a TON of names in there already and I've been adding more like crazy as teachers send me their lists!

A great FREE center for your lower and ELL students are my free Short A clip cards!

Kids simply read the word in the middle and put a clothespin on the picture that matches the word. Easy practice!

Another center great for your lower students is this word/picture match pocket chart center. It's super simple - kids just match the word to the picture on the pocket chart and record on their recording sheet. This pack has all the sounds for the year in it but only SIX words per sound / recording sheet so it's a great center that won't overwhelm your lower kiddos.

Okay, okay, so I'm SO super excited to debut this one!
My blog post about my CVC Words Roll activity has been one of my most popular blog posts (and resources by far)... and that activity practices all 5 short vowel sounds by rolling the dice to make words. I get so many awesome emails from kindergarten and first grade teachers that love them! I kept noticing that the kinder teachers weren't using them until after winter break since they hadn't learned all the vowel sounds yet...

SO, I decided to make ones that focus on each short vowel so you awesome kindergarten teachers can use them right away!! I not only made dice and differentiated mats that will produce words from all 6 popular short a word families (at, ap, am, an, ad, ag), I also differentiated it down again by making 3 other short a centers that each focus on only 2 word families at a time! I love these dice, too, because they produce a real short a word most of the time.. and when they don't, it's great nonsense word practice!

I present to you.... Short A CVC Word Families Roll!!

This is the activity for all the short a word families where they roll the 2 dice (the onset and rime) to build their word! If that word is on their mat, they cover it! Cubes work great but any type of marker will work!

They always put the dice in the same color order - and there is a directions sheet for each center if they forget!

For the "Short A Roll" that practices all 6 short a word families, I made 5 mats in the 4 x 5 grid for (20 pictures total) AND 5 mats in the easier 3 x 4 grid (12 pictures total) so students can each have their own sheet to play in groups, partners, etc. It's a great partner game or game to play in small groups!

What I really love, though, are the ones that focus on 2 word families at a time to start out with. These are really targeted practice to get them working hard on those word families! Those centers each have 5 different mats in the 3 x 4 grid.

Also, you can do the Roll and COVER version like I showed above or there's also Roll and COLOR where they are black and white versions of all the boards and kids take turns rolling the dice and coloring in the picture they rolled on their sheet. I LOVE this version as an easy print and use center. They will love playing again and again.

So there's the center that practices all 6 families (-an, -ag, -at, -am, -ap, and -ad) at a time:

Then, there's 1 that practices -at and -am word families only:

and also 1 that practices -an & -ap only...

and one that practices -ad & -ag only!

SO much reading practice!! And who doesn't love dice?? They can play it over and over again.. it can even get competitive! :)

You can grab it here: Short A CVC Word Families Roll
I made a set for each short vowel so they can keep playing it for the other vowels and then play the CVC Words Roll version with all the vowels mixed as an awesome review later!

Another center that I love is the PUZZLES center!! Can you believe I made it so far down this blog post without mentioning puzzles?? I'm pretty sure almost every concept I've blogged about has puzzles!

So one puzzle idea I like as an easy activity for fast finishers is flipping a real puzzle upside down and writing the words on the back! Grab 3 pieces that fit together and write a short a CVC word on them. Do it for as many words as you want them to do (the more you do, the more challenging the activity). I recommend making a baggie level A (6 words), baggie level B (15 words), and baggie level C (30 words)... this will keep them SO BUSY putting the words together, it's amazing.

Make sure you skip at least 1 piece all around the ones you pick as 3 that go together so they only will match up with the letters they go with to spell each word. I took a 1,000 piece puzzle and made a ton of these for different words!

You may remember I also made numbers 1-100 puzzles in my number sense blog post that people really seemed to love so this is a lot like that :) Just get a puzzle at the dollar store, flip it over, and voila!

I also have ready to go puzzles I made for practicing the CVC words with picture help that are a lot of fun. These are the Short A CVC Puzzles!

They come in 3 varieties:
1) Sorting pictures under the correct word family
2) Looking at the picture and building the CVC word under it
3) The same as #2 but with the word included for support

They're an easy way to get your students building CVC words in a hands on way and allowing for differentiation.

For more challenging puzzles, I LOVE using these Short Vowels Reading Fluency and Sequencing Puzzles!

Students read the fluency passage and then sequence the events of the story at the bottom. Simple, right? It's awesome targeted phonics practice, fluency practice, and sequencing practice.... and it looks like a game!

Okay so now what do you do in....
Small Groups

Warm up
First, you need to warm up! Pick the word family you want to work on and build their stamina from there. I love my Roll and Read Word Families set for this. There are 56 different differentiated sheets for short a word families alone (the other short vowel word families are also included). Here's all the A ones (each stack has 8 different levels):

Each word family comes with 2 levels of words also in 2 levels: with helper red text and without... and 2 levels of sentences also in 2 levels: with helper red text and without... so essentially there are 8 levels for each word family.

So let's say Monday, for your warm up, you play Roll and Read where it focuses on words from the -at word family with the red helper font to help them blend. Then, once they're getting that down, give them the sheet with black only text. Tell them how they're such super smart readers and they're doing so well with the red that you think they can do the black only text - gasp! :) If they're still struggling with the red, obviously don't move on to the black & repeat it again the next day - always go at the pace your kids are challenged but not frustrated by. :)

Tuesday's warm up - do the helper red words again but this time, if you feel like they're ready, give them the sentences with helper red next like this:

Wednesday: Repeat Monday (words with red then black only words) but with the Level B sheets. For your high group(s), start the Level Bs on Monday.

Thursday: Repeat Tuesday (words with red then sentences with red) but with the Level B sheets.

Friday: Black words then black sentences in whichever level you think they can handle! You could do the As then the Bs.

These are great to throw in as a center as well for lots of reading practice! That set includes the leveled roll and read activities you see above for the following word families: am, at, ap, ag, an, ad, ack, ig, in, im, id, ip, it, ill, ick, en, ed, et, ell, est, ent, ot, op, og, ob, ock, ug, ub, uck, and unk. I also have more packs of them in my store for long vowels and other phonics sounds if you want even more - I actually sell them all in a big bundle here that has over 1,000 pages.

Okay so now you're all warmed up and it's time for...

Small Group Reading

You want targeted phonics practice where everything they're reading is practicing that phonics skill - in this case: short A!

I have little readers for phonics sounds that are in color and black/white that are great for small groups... you probably already have some from your reading curriculum and those are probably perfect! One of my short A readers that I wrote is The Fat Cat.

On Monday, print the reader from your curriculum or my reader, and have students go through and underline, circle, or highlight all of the short A words they can find in it while "reading" it. They should be reading it but some might skim. Have them read it out loud in front of you as they mark the words. I think highlighting (with a light color like yellow) is best because it highlights the word without making it distracting by putting lines through it by accident. Once they have highlighted all the short a words, have them read through it again. It should be smoother this time! Allow them to take the books back to their seat to color and bring back to you when they're done (or when centers are over).

On Tuesday, read the book they highlighted and colored together in a small group. Then, partner them up at the table and have them read it with their partner. Then, let them take the book home to read to their family!

On Wednesday, bust out the fancy schmancy color version of the books to read again in small groups. Read the book together and focus on comprehension. Ask questions. Have them ask questions. THEN, the fun begins... dun dun dun! Bring out a little sand timer and tell them to put their finger on the first word. Say, "Ready... set... go!" and have them read the book as fast as they can. Holy moly will this build their reading stamina and they think it is the most fun thing in the entire world! Say "stop!" when the timer runs out and have them put a little tab (or strip of sticky note you rip off, whatever) on the word they left off on. THEN, say they're going to try to beat themselves. Yes, beat themselves. This is how you make it competitive and fun but not against each other. They're trying to better themselves - not compare themselves to their friends next to them. Plus, they should be touching each word they read so their eyes stay on their book and they obviously want to read fast so there's no time to look around :) Another solution to any reading insecurities is that if you finish before the sand timer runs out, you flip to the first page and keep going because oh-my-goodness-you-finished-it-and-are-even-doing-it-again that way there isn't a kid ever reading by themselves or start to hear the other voices fade. Trust me, just try this.

On Thursday, it's time to start really reading sentences in a text and comprehending. Give students a fluency passage focusing on the word family you're working on. I have an entire set of Short Vowel Word Family Fluency and Comprehension Passages that covers all the short vowel word families where each passage focuses on a specific family.

Each sheet has a reading passage that focuses on a specific family, a picture to aid comprehension (each also comes with a version without a picture for easily distracted students or for assessment), and 2 comprehension questions at the bottom.

Have students highlight the short a words as they read it out loud. Once they've highlighted it, have them either read it out loud by themselves (or to their partner or as a group) then let them go to their seats to color their picture and bring it back to you when they're done.

On Friday, read the passage together. Then, have them take turns reading it to their partner at the table. Next, go through the comprehension questions together. Read the question with them, have them think for a moment, and then talk about it with their partner. Once all the partners have agreed, have them share out to you and mark it. Then, it's sand timer time! :) Have them circle the word they ended on.. then do it again and underline that one.. then tell them to take it home to their parents and read it to them.

Okay so it's Friday now.
You're tired. You've sounded out cat 9,348,234 times and your kids realize that the weekend is a mere few hours a way and are getting antsy in their pants-ies. So what do you do??

Um, crafts and games obviously! But where you learn stuff. :) Can you tell by my writing skills deteriorating toward the end of this post that I feel like it's Friday?!

One of my favorite Friday games is...
MUSICAL READING CHAIRS.

It's simple and so much fun. Grab a stack of index cards and write as many short a words on them as you have students in your class. For example, if you have 22 students, make 22 cards. Have students bring their chairs to the carpet and put them along the edge of the carpet. Hand each kid a word card and tell them to take it to their chair, sit down, and read it. Then turn on the music! They set their card with the word facing up on their chair and start walking around the inside of the circle. When the music stops, they grab the card in the chair they're in front of and have to read it before they can sit down. It will be an explosion of reading words! The beauty of this game is you can have them go around and around a bunch of times without taking chairs to get people "out" for lots of reading practice. Once you start removing a chair each time like the traditional game, it has nothing to do with reading skills.. it's just whoever gets to a chair first like normal. Make sure you have a don't-go-after-a-card-someone-else-is and we-don't-grab-out-of-others'-hands talk before you play, of course, because it's Friday and they're 6. :) It is a ton of reading practice and kids LOVE it.

Once they get out, if you would rather them be doing something productive rather than watching the rest of the kids finish, have them work on their little short a books! These come in a small pack with just the short vowels or in a big bundle with all the first grade phonics sounds and blends for the year.

Each page has a word, a picture of the word to color, and lines to write a sentence about their picture using the word. These are another great little book to take home to their families.

Oh, I forgot to show you the word families review books! These are another great Thursday or Friday activity once they've gotten the different word families down. There's a book for -ap, -at, and -am and a book for -an, -ad, and -ag. What they do is they color and cut out the short a pictures. Then, they sort them and glue them under the correct word family flap. They make awesome little books that are fun to read afterward.

These are also great to put into interactive notebooks!

I also include a pre-made version that is already sorted for you to use if you have any students that you think would struggle but you still want them to be able to do the activity. You can also use it as an example one and then throw it in the library later! Or you can just do that one with your students for an easier activity or for the sake of time. I do think the sorting challenge is the best part though so I recommend doing it that way if you can!

Okay so now it's craft time!!

Again, you're tired. TIRED. It's Friday... and you're a teacher. Saying you're tired is like saying pizza is delicious. Obvious. True. Understated... no matter how many explanation points you use.

But the kids want fun. "FUN FRIDAY!" they proclaim. Okay, okay, let's do a craft.

Bust out a No Prep Writing Craft (of which I have over a hundred writing prompts - and more coming! - in this growing pack for all different themes, topics, holidays, genres, etc.) that uses a sound like the phonics sound you're working on.

You literally just hand it to them... they write on the lines, color the picture, cut it out, and glue it on a piece of construction paper and looky there, you've done a craft! They make great bulletin boards or something cute to take home to show their parents and be proud of.

For short a, I recommend "Cats" or "Crabs" :)

Another fun Friday center is building words with pipe cleaners and the much adored alphabet beads. You can bring out those short a pocket chart cards AGAIN (I told you there's a million ways to use them) and have them build the words on pipe cleaners.

Even more fun is writing sentences using the beads! Challenge them to write little sentences using their new words and show you!

.... and Phew!! I actually have a lot more I want to share but this post is already SO LONG so I'll save them! Thank you so much for reading through this if you're at this point. I really hope you were able to get some great ideas, a few free items, and maybe even some resources!

Want to get a bundle of almost all of these resources??

I linked where you could get everything in the post individually but I did want to share with you that you can get almost everything you saw bundled to save you a ton in my Short Vowels Ultimate Bundle so that'd be a really easy way to get a lot of the fun stuff I shared about as well :)

It has all the short vowel CVC word rolls, CVC puzzles, roll and read word families sheets, short vowels reading passages, short vowel no prep packs, short vowel fluency puzzles, the little books, and more! And you'll have all those activities for all of the short vowels :) AND it's a growing bundle which means I still am adding more short vowels things to it as I create them and raising the price accordingly so the sooner you get it, the more you save.. I love growing bundles because you get things not only at a bundled discount but free stuff too as things are added!

Thank you so much for your time! Happy teaching, friends! I'd love to hear from you in the comments!

Follow me on Pinterest for more teaching ideas!

Also - don't forget to join Miss Giraffe's Class so you never miss out on fun ideas and exclusive free stuff from me only for subscribers!

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Short A Activities and Resources (including freebies!)

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Short A is usually the first phonics sound you teach in kindergarten and first grade so I figured it'd be a great sound to show you teaching ideas and resources for! I constantly get asked, "What do you have for [insert phonics sound here]??"

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this activity on this website is used for CVC words but i think is a great way for students to create words out of letters in a fun way while also sounding out the letters. Putting letters or sounds on a cup and letting students mic and match the cups to create words is a great way for students to not only feel like they are playing a game but also learning at the same time.

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Hi! I want to share a simple, hands-on activity to practice reading CVC words. I was able to make these in about five minutes using the supplies below.

I only put three letters on each cup (you could easily do four). We practiced building different words by rotating one cup at a time. It's great once you have a stack of various cups, so students can mix and match to build all sorts of CVC words!

I was able to capture a video of my four year old practicing with the cups (don't mind my two year old in the background 😉

Enjoy!

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Hi! I want to share a simple, hands-on activity to practice reading CVC words. I was able to make these in about five minutes using the supplies below. I only put three letters on each cup (you could easily do four). We practiced building different words by rotating one cup at a time.

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Resources like this website provide teachers with ideas they may not have had. Their are so many different ways to teach phonics and websites like this that provide a lot of descriptive ways to describe this topic to students could give a teacher an idea they may not have been able to come up with without thinking outside the box. of course a teacher is always welcome to create their own lesson plans but sometimes they need extra help with ideas and websites like this are beneficial.

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An Introduction to Phonics and learning to read

Throughout this article, I aim to provide you with a clear understanding of teaching phonics effectively in the classroom and offer a variety of strategies and proven ideas to teach phonics.

WHAT IS PHONICS? A DEFINITION FOR TEACHERS AND PARENTS.

Phonics can be defined as a body of knowledge and skills regarding how the alphabet works.

In the context of this article, phonics refers to the method of teaching a student to read by developing their phonemic awareness and an understanding of the links between these sounds and how we use the letters of the alphabet to represent them.

This understanding is essential not only to read well but to bridge the gap between reading and writing.

With a good foundation of phonics knowledge, students can quickly become confident readers and independent solid writers.

PHONEMIC AWARENESS IMPROVES READING FLUENCY

When students develop phonemic awareness, it dramatically enhances their reading fluency which is a reading "superpower", allowing students to read with speed, accuracy and expression. Reading fluency dramatically enhances students' ability to read with intonation and energy that translates into expressive writing skills.

A COMPLETE DIGITAL READING UNIT FOR STUDENTS

How To Teach Reading Using Phonics

The use of phonics, or synthetic phonics as this method is technically known, is an effective and efficient means of teaching young students how to read. For this reason, phonics is the primary methodology for teaching reading in the school systems of many English-speaking countries.

In English, there are around 44 sounds or phonemes. Given that there are only 26 letters used in the language and that many sounds have more than one possible spelling, it is helpful that students learn the relationships between the letters and sounds in a straightforward and explicit manner.

To achieve this, phonics centers on the relationship between sounds and how they can be spelled.

It focuses on the letter and sound correspondences to enable students to break written words down into their component sounds before later recombining them to read the whole word. This process is known as segmenting and blending.

SEGMENTING AND BLENDING

Rather than allowing students to struggle to recognize complete words, as in the whole word method, or to look for contextual clues to figure out what is being said in a text, phonics teaches students to look at the letters of a word and segment it into its component sounds, before blending these sounds back together to read the entire word.

For example, when faced with the word cat, a student might run their finger under the first letter and make the initial /k/ sound, then /a/, and, finally, /t/.

Once they have successfully segmented these individual sounds, they then blend them together to say the word /kat/.

With practice, the speed with which students can look at a word, segment the sounds, and then blend these sounds together to read the word rapidly increases. This makes learning to read through the phonics method the most efficient way for most children to learn not just to read but to write too.

DECODING AND ENCODING: THE BRIDGE BETWEEN READING AND WRITING

Initially, phonics reaps rich rewards for students in terms of the passive skill of reading. This is also known as decoding.

Later, the student's knowledge of phonics can help them develop the active skill of writing or encoding.

For this reason, teachers will often weave emergent writing skills, such as letter formation, into their phonics lessons to take advantage of the opportunity to bridge this gap between reading and writing skills.

WHAT ABOUT SIGHT WORDS?

As effective as synthetic phonics are in teaching students to read, they won't be enough on their own to unravel all the opaque mysteries of English orthography.

English is something of a mongrel language. Over the centuries, it has been influenced by the German, Latin, French, Greek, and Celtic languages, among others.

This fact has led to many inconsistencies in spelling surviving in the modern language. Sometimes phonics won't be enough to decode these words. That's why students need to learn to read some words by sight alone.

Sight words, or high-frequency words as they are also known, are those extremely common words used time and again in most texts. Many of them are phonetically irregular and follow no conventional spelling rules. For children's reading books, sight words can account for up to 75% of the words in the text.

Therefore, it's best to combine the study of phonics with the learning of these sight words for maximum effectiveness. This is something to consider when engaged in your long-term planning.

The most effective strategy for learning these sight words is for discussion another day; for the remainder of this article, we will focus exclusively on the teaching of phonics.

THE STAGES OF PHONICS TEACHING

Before beginning to teach phonics, it is helpful to have a broad overview of the various stages that comprise a comprehensive synthetic phonics program. The following outline can serve as a practical general guide.

1. THE PRE-PHONICS STAGE

Before beginning to learn phonics in earnest (e.g. sound/letter correspondences), certain prerequisite skills need to be developed, including:

LISTENING SKILLS:

Children must be able to listen carefully to the sounds of speech. They must learn to filter speech sounds from other unrelated environmental sounds. This is usually best achieved by playing various listening games. When children have developed good aural comprehension, the game Simon Says is a fun way to further develop listening skills.

SOUND REPRODUCTION SKILLS:

Once the children have learned to discriminate between various sounds, they should learn to reproduce these themselves. This is usually achieved by modelling the sounds carefully for the children and encouraging them to copy these with particular attention paid to the shape of the mouth when making each sound. The popular fun game Telephone is excellent for this.

SEQUENCING SKILLS:

It is essential for children learning to read to be able to sequence not only the events of a story but the individual sounds of the words they hear. They must be able to recognize which sound comes before or after another. They should also be familiar with sequencing language such as first, second, before, after, then etc.

We have a complete guide to sequencing for teachers and students here.

2. SOUNDS AND ACTIONS

With our younger kids, it can be challenging to give them an anchor to 'hold on to the sounds of language.

To help build such an anchor to these sounds, which will later help link sounds to written letters, actions are often connected to each sound to aid in memorizing them. This is especially useful in the early stages as it works well for the most basic of sounds.

For example, when making the /m/ sound, children could be taught to rub their tummies as if they have eaten something delicious while saying " mmmmm ".

Or, they could open their mouths wide as if they were eating an apple while saying the /a/ sound.

It is easy to devise customized actions to go along with the various sounds of English and then teach these to your class. Ensure you consistently use the same actions every time for a specific sound to avoid confusion.

Later, when students come to segment words into their individual sounds, they can use these actions to help recall them.

3. THE LETTER AND SOUNDS CORRESPONDENCES

Explicitly teaching the letter and sound correspondences lie at the heart of good phonics teaching.

It is essential to understand a little of the theory of synthetic phonics to be effective here. Here are a few important points to consider:

● Letter Names vs. Letter Sounds

It is crucial that children understand the difference between the names of the letters of the English alphabet and the sounds, as these are two very different things. For example, the letter c is called / see/ but the letter itself usually denotes either a /k/ or /s/ sound. It may seem obvious, but many teachers not trained in the teaching of phonics overlook this distinction and unwittingly make learning to read much more difficult for their students as a result.

● Letters Don't Make The Sounds

As the limited letters used in English are needed to represent many different sounds, it's important to point out to students that letters don't make the sounds; they are simply an option for showing the sound. Often there will be more than one way to show the same sound; for example, the sound /s/ can be encoded in several different ways, including as s, c, and ps. When you are asking your students to write something, you can make the sound and ask them what letter they could use to show this sound. This type of phrasing reinforces the correct relationship between the letters and sounds.

● Avoid The Lazy Vowels

It is also important to remember that when teaching the letters and sounds to avoid making the lazy vowel or schwa sound at the end of a sound. For example, when pronouncing the /k/ sound, make it crisp and short, rather than adding in an extra -uh sound at the end. This will make it much easier for the students to blend sounds together later.

HOW TO PLAN A PHONICS LESSON FOR YOUR CLASS

The detail and delivery of your phonics lessons will depend greatly on the specific situation of your students. However, some general points will be helpful to consider when planning a phonics lesson for your class.

● Keep Phonics Lessons Short and Sweet

To avoid getting bogged down and boring your kids, keep phonics lessons short. In and around 10 to 15 minutes is ideal and no more than 20 minutes. Remember, we want our kids to be lifelong readers, and that means they need to enjoy it!

● Be Consistent

There is a lot of ground to cover here, and consistency is key. If your students are learning to read, they'll need to practice and study their phonics every day - preferably at the same time each day too.

● Keep on Moving

While a lot of reinforcement will be required over the course of the year, research has shown that keeping a brisk pace through a phonics program achieves the best results. Don't get bogged down waiting for everyone to get everything before moving on. You will be revisiting the material.

● Keep Things Fun!

Learning to read should be a positive experience, particularly as learning to read means acquiring one of the most empowering skills a child will ever have. To keep things fun, be sure to incorporate lots of enjoyable activities and games into your phonics lessons.

TEACHING ACTIVITIES FOR ANY TEXT - GREAT FOR GUIDED READING

Phonics Games and Activities
I Spy
This perennial classic is a fun way to get some phonics practice in. You can adapt it to say, "I spy with my little eye something beginning with..." and say a sound rather than a letter. If you wish to work on letter recognition rather than sound, simply hold up the letter itself quietly.
Sorting Activities
Sorting activities are a great way for students to practice their phonics knowledge and can take on an almost infinite number of variations. For example, younger kids may enjoy sorting objects into two hula hoops on the floor, which are labelled with their initial consonant sounds, while older kids might work on consonant blends.
Bingo
Bingo is another very versatile game that can be used to practice sound and letter recognition. Simply decide what you want to work on and place those into suitably sized grids (9×9 works well). These could be initial consonants, vowel digraphs, or pictures of nouns. If you set up some blank grids on laminated sheets, you can save yourself a lot of prep time too. Simply write a broad selection of sounds you are working on onto the whiteboard. Students can select 9 of them to fill in their laminated grid. Now each student will have their own unique bingo card!
Partner Reading
Partner reading is a great way to practice listening skills, as well as reading. Organize students into pairs and provide them each with a copy of the same text. One partner reads the text while the other follows closely with their own copy. The listening partner helps the reader decode difficult words when they have trouble. After a time, partners switch roles. This usually works best when partners are of a similar ability. You can further differentiate here by choosing different texts to suit the abilities of each pair.
Shared Writing
Shared writing is an effective means of introducing independent writing activities. For beginning students, it may take the form of simply spelling a basic CVC word together. For example, to work on the spelling of the word cat, you could draw three cradles on the whiteboard and say each sound; in turn, challenge the students to come up and write the corresponding letter in the cradle until they have written the word - -.

As we can see, the teaching of phonics is a highly efficient and effective means of teaching our children to read and, ultimately, write. It works on training students to be able to hear the various sounds of English, identify these sounds, and link these sounds to the symbols we call letters.

While there are other methods of learning to read employed with emergent readers in the classroom, in two decades of teaching, I've never seen another methodology come anywhere close to phonics for overall effectiveness.

And, best of all, phonics can be a lot of fun to learn and teach too!

OTHER GREAT ARTICLES RELATED TO PHONICS

The content for this page has been written by Shane Mac Donnchaidh. A former principal of an international school and English university lecturer with 15 years of teaching and administration experience. Shane's latest Book, The Complete Guide to Nonfiction Writing, can be found here. Editing and support for this article have been provided by the literacyideas team.

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Teaching Phonics: A Complete Guide for Parents and Teachers

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A guide to teaching phonics to students including phonemic awareness, reading fluency, phonics sounds for reading and, phonics games and activities. Teach kids to read through a logical research based method.

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this resource is for teachers and provides students free print outs that include bookmarks with words that have a matching photo, poster print outs and even printable flash cards that the teachers are able to use in the classroom with students. young students are attracted to colorful visuals and resources like this are beneficial so that teachers spend more time teaching the students and less time designing posters and flashcards. they are also able to print multiple copies rather than purchasing for each student.

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Printable phonics and reading resources - Teach Your Monster to Read

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Flashcards, posters, bookmarks, display materials and playing cards.

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this app is was developed by teachers to use in classes with students and is able to be used to your schools benefit meaning it is a flexible app to use to your students specific needs. students are able to learn everything from letter sounds, blending sounds and even the formation of words and sounds. apps like this that are full of content and easy to use are benefitial because students are focused on what they are learning rather than how to use the app.

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A programme that grows with your children

Our flagship programme, Jolly Phonics, teaches children to read and write using synthetic phonics, which is widely recognised as the most effective way to teach children to read and write in English. That was over 25 years ago. Since then our immense progress has been studied in numerous research projects, the results of which led to phonics becoming central to the UK curriculum. Today we are now used in over 100 countries worldwide. As the leading synthetic phonics publisher, and the most experienced, we offer a 7-year school programme that teaches not only phonics, but spelling, punctuation and grammar too.

Jolly Phonics validated by the DfE as a complete systematic synthetic phonics programme!
Trusted by teachers and loved by children, we're delighted to announce that Jolly Phonics has been validated by the Department for Education as a complete systematic synthetic phonics programme. This means that the programme meets the 16 essential core criteria required by the DfE.
Since its 30-year anniversary in 2017, Jolly Learning and its flagship, multi-sensory SSP programme, Jolly Phonics, has continued to cement its position as the leading programme in teaching children to read and write from an early age.
Emma Ince is the Deputy Head Teacher at Tudor Primary School in Suffolk, England. She has overseen the school's progression in literacy by using the Jolly Phonics programme over the last 8 years. In this short video, she discusses the ways they use the programme and the success they have had.
With its fresh and vibrant redesign, Jolly Phonics' complete range of new and improved SSP resources continue to evolve to meet the needs of pupils and teachers, whilst delivering exceptional results for all children, both in today's classroom and for the future.

How Jolly Phonics works

Jolly Phonics is a comprehensive programme, based on the proven, fun and muliti-sensory synthetic phonics method that gets children reading and writing from an early age. This means that we teach letter sounds as opposed to the alphabet. These 42 letter sounds are phonic building blocks that children, with the right tools, use to decode the English language. When reading a word, they recognise the letters and blend together the respective sounds; when writing a word they identify the sounds and write down the corresponding letters. These skills are called blending and segmenting. These are two of the five skills that children need to master phonics:
You can view videos for each of the five key skills by clicking on the buttons below.
Alongside these skills children are also introduced to the main alternative spelling of vowels. These five skills form the foundation that children build on with each year of grammar teaching.

Jolly Phonics works - proven results!
Rush Green Primary School in Essex, England, turned to Jolly Phonics to improve literacy levels across the school. After seeing great progress in their children's abilities, they have since extended their teaching with the Grammar programme through the years.
There has been much research all over the world on Jolly Phonics, which can be viewed here. The research shows that the progress made by children using Jolly Phonics far exceeds that of children not taught using a synthetic phonics approach. It is effective across the ability range, with boys doing just as well as girls, while those with English as their second language can do as well as children who have it as their first.

"Jolly Phonics is amazing for the children to learn letter sounds and help pronounce words to take them onto the next stage of their speech and language."

Jolly Phonics continues for the next 6 years

The programme continues throughout the school years, by extending the earlier phonics teaching with further spelling, grammar and punctuation concepts. Each year of teaching provides continuous revision and consolidation of topics taught in previous years. Children are also taught the core concepts of grammar and punctuation, starting with simple age-appropriate definitions, which are gradually built on with each year of teaching. The teaching continues to be multi-sensory with actions and colour coding (fitting with Montessori) for parts of speech to help children develop their understanding of how language works. The systematic programme means children are given the tools that they need to independently write what they want clearly and with expression.

With spelling, punctuation and grammar (or SPaG) now more prominent in curricula around the world we have been extending our literacy programme to go up to age 11 (Year 6/P7 in the UK). Our programme has been at the forefront of this teaching and meets the aims of both the UK National Curriculum and the US Common Core State Standards.

"The systematic teaching of spelling, grammar, punctuation and vocabulary is evident in the students daily writing. They are able to recognise and use parts of grammar in their reading and writing."
Click here to view all resources via the UK Shop Click here to view all resources via the US Shop
Programme progression

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Jolly Phonics and Grammar is a 7-year programme that takes children beyond phonics and integrates spelling, grammar and punctuation.

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this website I feel is a great resource for a teacher to use to gain more ideas and a large variety of words and assignments to give the students to understand phonics. I really enjoy websites that offer content that benefits the teacher as well as the students.

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IXL Language Arts | Topics for pre-K to 12th grade

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See all of the language arts topics available on IXL! From phonics to grammar, reading to writing, there's always something new to learn.

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I think this activity i perfect for a beautiful day to ge the students outside and learning. for this activity I would write the wrod on the ground with chalk and the students will hop on each letter while sounding the word out. this gets their entire body interacting with their brain to learn the words and sounds.

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Kindergarten readiness skills include letter recognition, phonemic awareness, and phonics skills. If your child can already recognize letters and can hear and say letter sounds then you may be wondering what types of phonics activities you should be doing with him. The truth is that you don't really need to do anything other than reading together every day, but if your child is ready to start reading playing phonics games can be both fun and motivating!

One of our favorite ways to play with phonics is the Walk the Word game! Kids get to use their whole body to practice identifying and blending sounds together. Adding the gross motor aspect to it helps kids to internalize the process of sounding out a word.

This game is simple to set up and easy to play! All you need is sidewalk chalk and a place to draw. Write easily decodable (sound-out-able), very large words on the concrete. Ask the child to start at the side you start reading at. Then have them step on each letter and say the sound. Prompt them or give them the sounds if needed (this is a game not a test) and have fun walking and reading the words!

This phonics game is fun and helps kids make the transition from saying the letters sounds to putting the letters together to form words. Making learning fun is the best way to help your child get ready for kindergarten!
Thank you to My Cute Graphics for the use of this superhero kids graphic.
This post is part of our Get Ready for K Through PLAY! series where a group of bloggers share weekly ideas that you can do to help get your child ready for kindergarten. Check out the Kindergarten book and literacy readiness activities shared by the other hosts:

20 Alphabet and Phonics Activities for Kids from Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas

Water Balloon Phonics from Mess for Less

Active Alphabet Activities from Toddler Approved

Learning Letters and Their Sounds from Mama Smiles

Chalk Letters from Rainy Day Mum
Next week we'll all be back sharing activities to develop skills needed for Kindergarten!
And catch up on my other Get Ready for K Through PLAY! posts: How to Read Aloud to Your Child, Math Activities for Kindergarten: Snack Time Practice, Teacher Says! Listening Game, Language Experie nce Story and 3 Independents Skills {You May Not Realize} Your Child Needs for Kindergarten.

In the meantime be sure to follow our Get Ready for K Through PLAY! Pinterest Board for a huge collection of Kindergarten readiness activities!

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Kindergarten readiness skills include letter recognition, phonemic awareness, and phonics skills. If your child can already recognize letters and can hear and say letter sounds then you may be wondering what types of phonics activities you should be doing with him.

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this activity is circle diagrams with 8 pictures around a sound in the center. the students have to match the picture with the sound. for example if the sound in the middle was "sh" the students would look for pictures of sharks, shoes, sheets, etc. to match the sound in the center. students benefit from visuals because they say the words out loud and are able to learn the multiple ways the sound is used.

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These bright, hands-on digraph wheels make a wonderful literacy center focused on learning common digraphs such as CH- and SH-.

For more fun with words, check out our best-selling Editable Sight Word Games for endless fun!

Getting Ready

To prep for the activity, I began by printing the digraph wheels on cardstock to give them extra durability. Then, I cut around the outside border of each circle.

I wanted the kids to be able to self check later, so I clipped the correct answers with clothespins, turned each card to the back and colored a small dot to mark the correct clipping spots.

I ran them through my laminator for added strength and filled up a small basket with clothespins.

That's it! We were ready to play.

Digraph Wheels Play

I began by laying out the digraph wheels next to the basket of pegs.

I grabbed the QU- wheel and asked the kids to place a peg on all the pictures that had a "qu" sound. Students quickly spotted the queen picture and placed a peg on it.

I assisted the kids by saying the less familiar words such as "quill" and "quail." They listened carefully to each word and placed a peg on the other pictures that started with a "qu" sound: quilt, quarter and quiet.

Children continued playing with the other digraph wheels until they were finished. Then, they turned over the cards to check their answers.

For those early finishers, I challenged the kids to think of other words that contained each digraph. It was amazing what a long list we made!

The kids in my class loved solving the digraph wheels and the activity became a fast favorite at our literacy center!

Grab Your Set

Click the blue button below to download your free set of the digraph wheels and then grab your Editable Sight Word Games, too!

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These bright, hands-on digraph wheels make a wonderful literacy center focused on learning common digraphs such as CH- and SH-.

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This game is letter/sound bingo. I will create cards with letters and I will call out letters and say sounds and the students will cross out the letters/sounds that they have until they get four in a row. what I like about a game like this is its very interactive. I think this type of activity creates an exciting way to learn letters and sounds.

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Try these free alphabet games to help your child remember letter names!
(This post contains affiliate links.)
Have our seen our Four in a Row games? Kids take turns reading or answering a math fact and dotting their answer. The first to get four in a row, wins.

I've modified this simple game to review many different skills, from learning to read to practicing addition facts.

A reader recently asked for a new Four in a Row game - one that helps kids practice naming letters.

So here we go!
How to play

Grab two Do-a-Dot markers or counters in two different colors. Another option is to grab two different colored markers.

Take turns naming a letter. When you name a letter correctly, dot, cover, or color it.

The first to get four in a row, wins!

I would recommend this game for kids who know most of their letters but need a bit of review.

And if you want to play the game as it's designed, your child will need to have a little understanding of strategy.

It also helps if she can count to four. 😉

Thanks to the letter of the wee k we did when he was three, my Five doesn't need practice recognizing his letters.

But he has a little sister.

I've been doing Letter of the Week with my just-turned-Three, so she had fun doing these pages with me. But we didn't worry about getting four in a row. She can't count groups of objects larger than three, and she's not ready for any kind of strategy.

Not a problem! We still had fun taking turns naming and dotting the letters. In fact, we named every letter on the board. Yay for extra practice!
In the download you'll find four-in-a-row games for

Uppercase A-E

Uppercase H-J

Uppercase K-O

Uppercase P-T

Uppercase U-Z

Uppercase A-Z

Lowercase a-e

Lowercase h-j

Lowercase k-o

Lowercase p-t

Lowercase u-z

Lowercase a-z

Blank board (write your own!)

Have fun!
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Free alphabet games to promote letter recognition - The Measured Mom

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Try these free alphabet games to help your child remember letter names! (This post contains affiliate links.) Have our seen our Four in a Row games? Kids take turns reading or answering a math fact and dotting their answer. The first to get four in a row, wins.

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This activity is visually stimulating because I get to draw a picture for the students which is engaging because we all have to focus on the photo. For example, I will draw a snowman with a hate, scarf, carrot and buttons. I will say "where on this photo is the letter H" they will then tell me "hat" and I will cross that item off.

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14 Phenomenal Phonics Activities for Preschoolers

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Phonics activities are a tried-and-true method for building literacy skills in little learners. Take advantage of this handy list of our favorite educational and entertaining activities to try

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this app is for children aged two and up. When the child first begins they take a short quiz for placement within the app and they get to start learning where they are comfortable. this app could help young students gain confidence because of the self-paced set up of the app. this app is also teacher and parent friendly.

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Reading Eggs was created by expert educators with over 30 years of experience.

The multi-award winning early learning resource supports your child's learn to read journey with carefully designed online reading games and activities that are easy to follow, self-paced, and highly engaging for young children.

By incorporating Reading Eggs into your child's daily routine, you will be helping to prepare them for the same structured learning they will need to succeed and feel confident at school.

Your child can start learning to read today! Start your FREE trial of Reading Eggs here.

How Reading Eggs teaches your child to read

Reading Eggs is based on solid scientific research to give your child the best chance at reading success.

Using the five essential keys to reading success, the program unlocks all aspects of learning to read for your child. Learn more here

The lessons use colorful animation, fun characters, songs, and rewards to keep children motivated.

The program is completely interactive to keep children on task.

When children start the program, they can complete a placement quiz to ensure they are starting at the correct reading level.

Parents can access detailed progress reports as well as hundreds of downloadable activity sheets that correspond with the lessons in the program.

The program includes over 2500 online books for kids - each ending with a comprehension quiz that assesses your child's understanding.

A breakdown of the learn to read process with Reading Eggs
Learn essential reading skills
Children complete animated online lessons where they learn essential reading and phonics skills. The variety of fun activities within each lesson provides the repetition needed for these skills to become part of the child's long term memory.
Read books online
Children gain confidence by reading online books that only contain words they have already studied in the program. There are over 2500 levelled books in the Reading Eggs program.
Earn rewards
Children earn golden eggs as rewards for the progress they make. They can use these eggs to buy fun reward games and items for their avatar or house. Children also earn a certificate at the end of each map, which can be printed.
Complete quizzes
After 10 lessons, children complete a quiz. This provides you with a report of what your child is learning. Children can repeat the online lessons as many times as they like to reinforce key learning concepts.

Learning to read can be easy and fun - start your FREE trial of Reading Eggs today

Join over 10 million users worldwide and see how your child can learn to read in just weeks. Start your FREE trial of Reading Eggs today!

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How Reading Eggs teaches your child to read

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Reading Eggs was created by expert educators with over 30 years of experience. The multi-award winning early learning resource supports your child's learn to read journey with carefully designed online reading games and activities that are easy to follow, self-paced, and highly engaging for young children.

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Has handwriting recognition, voice recognition and correction and word pronunciation features. what I like about those features is that students who need the extra help due to learning disabilities would be able to use this app as well. I feel that speach to test and text to speak are very important features especially for students at such a yound age to be able to maneuver. Also has data collection for teachers and parents.

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takes students on a captivating reading adventure and includes built-in mini-games and rewards to keep students motivated and engaged. OgStar Reading is a patent-pending, technologically-sophisticated app with handwriting recognition feedback, speech recognition feedback, audio-visual synchronization, voice-over correction feedback, and built-in word pronunciation features.

Data collection is available for parents and teachers describing student performance and progress over time. This delightful, multisensory, structured literacy game helps students of all ages to independently develop evidence-based literacy skills, in accordance with the scientific standards recommended by the National Reading Panel indicating the best ways to teach students how to read.

Volume discounts are available for schools and educational organizations on both iPad and Chrome versions of OgStar Reading.

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takes students on a captivating reading adventure and includes built-in mini-games and rewards to keep students motivated and engaged. OgStar Reading is a patent-pending, technologically-sophisticated app with handwriting recognition feedback, speech recognition feedback, audio-visual synchronization, voice-over correction feedback, and built-in word pronunciation features.