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"Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate the individual sounds that form words" (What is Phonemic Awareness and Why Is It Important? 2021).

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"Phonics is the knowledge of how spoken sounds (phonemes) can be represented by written letters (graphemes)" (Barrett, 2023).

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Phonemic Awareness Classroom Activities

Classroom Activity #1: Sound Detective: the students will listen to a word pronounced by a classmate or the teacher. They will identify the first sound, then the ending sound. This activity allows the students to dissect the word and identify individual sounds within the word.

Classroom activity #2: Word pop it. There is a pop it popper available where the students can each have their own popper and when the teacher says a word, the student will pop it out while sounding it out. Once the word it all popped on the popper. The students can draw the word on a dry erase marker while sounding it out to show the teacher they can identify the sounds within the word and spell out the word.

At Home Activity: I Spy a Sound: Families can play a fun game of I Spy at home. Someone can say "I spy with my little eye a word that begins with an (A) and the children will have to look around the room to name what they think their family member spied. This allows parents and family members to actively engage in their children's reading comprehension skills.

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Phonics Classroom Activities

Classroom Activity #1: Playdough Listen and Spell: The teacher will tell the students "I am thinking of a word that starts with the sound "mmm"" The students will then write the capital and lower case of the letter they think relates to the sound the teacher thought of on their playdough flattened out. The teacher can start off by just doing letters, but then they can sound out each letter in a word for the students to write out on the playdough.

Classroom activity #2: One fun activity my mentor mentioned was Sound Cup Race. Each table will have 26 plastic cups with one letter on it both capital and lower case. The students will bring in some little trinket toys around the house and we will have a game of who can place all objects in the correct cup by their beginning sound. After that game is completed, we could do the objects in the cup by the ending sound. This is interactive and lets the students actively engage as a whole group.

At home Activity: Grocery Store I Spy. As parents take their kids to the grocery store, they can pick a letter and the children have to point out things that start with that specific letter. For example, the parents could say "Let's find everything that starts with the letter C" and emphasize on the sound it makes once they find something that starts with the specified letter. This is an activity I have recommended to my parents in the past.

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Barrett, L. (2023, July 6). What Is Phonics? A Guide for Educators and Families. We Are Teachers. https://www.weareteachers.com/what-is-phonics/

Basics: Vocabulary | Reading Rockets. (n.d.). Www.readingrockets.org. https://www.readingrockets.org/reading-101/reading-and-writing-basics/vocabulary

Marshall, J. (2023, November 6). What Is Reading Comprehension? We Are Teachers. https://www.weareteachers.com/what-is-reading-comprehension/

Staake, J. (2020, July 27). 18 fantastic reading fluency activities to build literacy in young readers. WeAreTeachers. https://www.weareteachers.com/reading-fluency-activities/

What Is Phonemic Awareness and Why Is It Important? (2021, June 21). https://learningreadinghub.com/blog/phonemic-awareness/what-is-phonemic-awareness-why-is-it-important/#What_is_Phonemic_Awareness

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Vocabulary is a key component to reading comprehension. "Reading vocabulary is the set of words that a student can read and understand" (Basics: Vocabulary, Reading Rocks, n.d.).

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Reading Vocabulary Activities

Classroom Activity #1: Word Wall Word of the Week: In my classroom, I have a word wall of the sight words we are working on for the month. Each week we focus on one of those words and I challenge my students to use the word as much as possible and each time they use it, if they catch the other student using the word, they get a point on their behavior wall. If I use the word and my student catches it, they also get to pin up on the wall to try to get to super star for the day.

Classroom Activity #2: Rooting Up is the name of the activity: During this activity we will talk about different words in a story that we read. For example, if the book said the word push, we would work together to root that word up/ build it up. Other words that sound difficult but have the same meaning for the word push would be "pushed, pushing, push- up etc." During the story, we would pause and talk about the word push and what it means so that way when we build it up later in our activity, they know those words mean the same thing.

At Home Activity: At home activities for Vocabulary can be as simple as learning there is more than one word for everyday things such as "cup." Have your child point to something in the room and identify what that object is. We can then talk about other words for "cup" such as glass. They are spelling completely different but are referring to the same thing.

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"Reading fluency is the ability to read with proper speed, accuracy, and expression" (Felton, 2022).

Fluency develops comprehension but it also motivates the students to read. If one is not fluent in reading, they will most likely not want to read anything.

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Fluency Activities

Classroom Activity #1: REAL Reader Rubric: The students will pair up with an hourglass as a timer. They will take turns reading the book to their partner. The partner will gauge them based off the rubric provided and score them. They will then have the chance to talk about each score as the teacher walks around offering advice to each pair. Once the first partner is done reading, the other partner will take their turn and vis versa. I think a timer is a good way for the students to track their speed and progress as well.

Classroom Activity #2: "Sentence trees are a terrific reading activity that builds fluency in younger students" (Staake, 2020). Each student will get a card that has a sentence that builds up and looks like a tree. It will start with one word such as "I" then the next line will have "I like" and so on. This is a great activity to help with fluency building. Teachers could make this activity interactive by grouping them up and seeing who can read it quicker.

At Home Activity: Record our Book Reader: My kids love when I record them dancing or singing. It would be a great tool at home to record your child reading one of their favorite books. You can share the book reading with friends and family but most importantly your child so they can see what they need to world on. You could tell them to retry it a couple times to get the reading just right.

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"The process of understanding what we are reading, is also knowns as comprehension" (Marshall, 2023).

This is where the students understand not only the words and their meaning that they are reading, but a story as a whole, or even what a sentence means.

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Comprehension Activities

Classroom Activity #1: Roll Dice and Talk: This game is extremely interactive, and my kids love dice. The teacher will give the students a book they need to read to themselves. Once the class has finished reading it, we will play the roll the dice game. Each student will get a chance to roll the dice and depending on what number it lands on, will determine which question they will answer. For example, if the dice rolls on a 3, the question would be " name two characters in the book" and if they roll a 4, the question would be " what is your favorite part of the book and why?" This will get their little brains thinking and allow the teacher to understand their comprehension levels.

Classroom Activity #2: "Story Cheeseburger, get your kiddos revved up about reading comprehension by turning the process into a burger building experience" (31 Effective Reading Comprehension Activities- teaching expertise, 2023). The students will disucss different parts of the story to create each part of the hamburger. The teacher can write each piece on a hamburger on the whiteboard to show them visuals of the big classroom burger.

At Home Activity: "I predict" This activity allows the parents to sit down with their children at night and look at books cover and predict what they think the story will be about. They will then read the book. Once the book is finished, they will talk about what really happened and work on their comprehension skills from reading books.