Let’s Get Phonological by Sally Busby

2025-09-08 17:58:31 UTC

Activity Description: Gather students in a circle and say a simple word aloud, like “cat.” Then ask, “What rhymes with cat?” Encourage students to take turns responding with rhyming words: “hat,” “bat,” “mat,” etc. To make it more engaging, toss a soft ball to the student who answers, then they toss it to the next person. If a student gets stuck, offer a hint or model a rhyme.

Extension: Add a rhythm or chant: "I say 'dog,' you say ''!" "I say 'tree,' you say ''!"

This builds phonological awareness through repetition, sound play, and movement.

Phonological Activity - K. Hart

2025-09-09 00:46:02 UTC

In first grade we have specific spelling words and sounds that we are working on for the week. Each morning they are displayed on the board and we work them out together.

Activity Description: This week our sound is short u. A few of our spelling words include: mug, tug, pup, cup, etc. I (teacher) stand at the front of the class with the words displayed and demonstrate. We practice them by holding our left arm out and using our right hand to chop each phoneme. For mug, students will chop at their bicep and say /m/, chop at the bend of their arm and say /ŭ/, and chop at their wrist /g/. They then swipe from their bicep their wrist and say the whole word as it was sounded out: mug. As we move down the list, I say it quieter to pay attention to who is saying their sounds out loud.

Syllable Exercise:

2025-09-09 00:52:55 UTC

Using the syllables of words to understand and learn note values.

I love using food words to break up into syllables. For example, I write two quarter notes on the board and show them that I can break the word cherry into two syllables, allowing each note to have a syllable of the word. One quarter note gets the "che" and the second quarter note gets the "rry" assigned to them. We can make a list of other fruits to dissect into syllables and assign note values to them as well. The students clap out the syllables as they decide what note value to give each syllable.

Watermelon, strawberry, pear, apple, etc.

Syllable activity description:

2025-09-10 17:44:30 UTC

The activity I would use is called the "Clap It Out" game. Kids will choose a list of familiar words (like "apple," "banana," "elephant") and say each word aloud one at a time. Then, I will have students repeat the word and clap once for each syllable they hear. For example, when you say “banana,” students repeat it and clap three times: “ba-na-na.” You can make it more or less interactive by having students jump, tap their desks, or use rhythm sticks instead of clapping. This activity builds phonological awareness and helps students begin to segment and manipulate spoken language, which supports early reading and spelling skills.

hp118_1 — 2025-09-10 18:43:57 UTC

In the Kindergarten class that I am interning in, the teacher will incorporate a quick oral lesson when asking the students what day and month it and and how many syllables they hear in the word. She models how to sound out and use hand gestures (taps) while saying the month and day. Throughout the day, when talking about different subjects or after reading a story, she will repeat the syllable claps for the class to hear and ask a few different words to be broken apart by the students.

Onset-Rime Exercise

shrayarao — 2025-09-11 15:00:36 UTC

As a child, I remember playing Hangman in school as a spelling exercise. As the game goes, the teacher would think of a word and write the appropriate number of dashes on the board. Every time one of us students guessed a letter correctly, they'd fill in one of the blanks. If we guessed a letter incorrectly, they'd draw a part of the hanging man - head, body, etc.

The thing is, I think that Hangman contains violent imagery that isn't developmentally appropriate for little ones - specifically, kindergarteners, who I hope to teach. I was thinking of adapting this game with more child-friendly imagery, like a sun, for example. As children, when we drew pictures, we'd often draw a yellow sun in the corner of the paper with sticks around it, to represent the sun rays - maybe even a smiley face. So, instead of a hanging man, I was thinking I'd use a sun instead.

To turn this into a lesson about onsets and rimes, I'd choose a word with an obvious onset and rime, like "cat". I'd then draw a couple of blank spaces on the board - one for the onset, and one for the rime (e.g., _-at). I'd then tell my kids, "This word ends with -at. Who can guess what letter or sound goes at the beginning?" They can suggest different consonants (c, h, b, etc.). If it's not the correct consonant, I'll cross it out and let them keep trying.

Each time a student makes a guess, instead of drawing a hanging man, I'll add a part to the sun. For the first wrong guess, I'll draw a circle. For the next wrong guess, I'll add a stick around the edge (a sun ray) - and so on, and so forth. The drawing will also give the children a visual cue, and gamifying the onset-rime lesson will make it exciting and engaging.

Maria Goldstein - Activity Description

2025-09-11 17:47:35 UTC

Print out cards with images like a fan, star, snake, and dog.
Using a document camera, review the names of the images with the class.
Cut the cards in half, shuffle them, and spread them face up on the desk.
Have the students help you match the halves together while reviewing each onset and rime. Write the onset on one half and the rime on the other. Example: Say "f" and "an" while putting the halves of the fan together. Write the onset on the first half and the rime on the second half. Have the students repeat after you for the onset and rime and then say the word together.

This helps connect the sounds to the letters of each word and to the picture.

Syllable Activity

2025-09-12 18:42:25 UTC

My kids that I work with have been working really hard on closed syllables and how that affects how a vowel is pronounced. Something that has been really productive in using these closed syllables is having the students write nonsense words on the board. With memorization from reading, many students simply remember how to spell words, so with nonsense words, the concept of closed syllables can be reinforced. For example, I had my students spell the word “gitten” on the whiteboard (because they feel fancy writing on the main whiteboard). With this, students could understand that the word needs two Ts to make the first vowel the sound of the letter, not the letter name. Without the second T, the word would be pronounced differently.

Phoneme

2025-09-13 13:29:06 UTC

Roll & Read

Prep:

chart with 6 word lists of phoneme being focused on
each list is numbered 1-6
dice

Activity:

student 1 rolls the dice
student will say the words from the list with the number they landed on

This activity is very simple and easy for 3rd grade to understand. Students benefit from the phonemic awareness and fluency of this game.

Rhyming Activity- Heggerty

2025-09-13 16:47:23 UTC

Each morning I do a quick 10-15 minute Heggerty lesson with my students. It is the first thing we do after our soft start morning, so I try to have students as actively involved as possible. I have a Heggerty Hero who gets to hold our classroom stuffed animal the next day during Heggerty. This goes to a student who was actively participating throughout the lesson. During the rhyming section, I will say a word then pause, and say the other two words. For example, "Cat.... Mat or Car?" then I will have students respond verbally. Another rhyming exercise is to say a word then another word and have students respond if the word rhymes or not. For example "Cat... Sat, stand up if you think they rhyme, tap your head if you think they do not". I like to have them respond through movement to encourage participation.

Rhyme

2025-09-13 22:44:43 UTC

An activity I would use in the classroom depending on the phonological level of my students would be a rhyme activity.

One child would start with a word (like cat). From there children around the room would add to the chain until no more can be added. "cat", "bat", "hat".

I would encourage students to use even nonsense words when all of the "real" words are used. This is so that they would like "lat" "zat" just so that they can build even more sound awareness!

Depending on what the enviroment was like I could do this as a whole class or even in small groups so that I could make them more specific depending on their ability levels.

Also I think that allowing the students to use the nonsense words is important because it takes away the worry of "being wrong" with more focus on the actual word sound and understanding that fully.

Let's Get Phonological

2025-09-13 23:45:18 UTC

I have uploaded a photo of something I have always wanted to use in my classroom.

Many of the children I work with love using building blocks so using them with their learning is a no-brainer to me. With this activity, you simply write word combinations and segment them with the different building blocks and the students can twist the blocks to form different words and sound them out. What I love about this activity is that if they cannot sound out the word, they can go back to a previous word and use that word to help them form the new word.

This is also a great activity to use for a station or for quiet time when waiting for another activity!

Onset-Rime

annalisarouse — 2025-09-15 01:52:51 UTC

There was an activity I looked into when I was tutoring called Rime House. It is an activity for students to match onset and rime words using photos. It is a visual activity and the materials include a photo of a house, with cards that have images of various things like 'hat', 'mat', 'bat', 'log', 'fog', 'jog'. Students then put the words with the same rime into house. There are many examples and practices that can be done with this. For example, using visual cues, I could ask a student to blend the and segment the words.

I would like to implement this into my classroom, and I think it would be especially helpful in small group lessons. I also think this would be a great activity to do with EL students.