5 Components of Teaching Phonics

Presented by Laura Greer (’07)

Below are strategies and resources for five main areas of phonics instruction, adapted
from fantastic workshops by Sara Egli at Atlanta Institute ’07 and in Phoenix 2007-2008.
In addition to working at the elementary level, many of these techniques can be adapted
for struggling older students, too. The annotated comments below offer a few starter
ideas on how to do this, but be creative and share your own. For further assistance,
also see the compilation of pre-, during-, and post- reading literacy strategies linked to
this document on the Resource Exchange.

Agenda:
1. Phonemic Awareness
2. Phonics Instruction
3. Centers & Small Group
4. Songs & Websites
5. Tracking & Investing
An example of tracking class mastery in phonics.

Part 1: Phonemic Awareness: The awareness that words are made up of sounds.
Phonemic awareness activities are completely auditory (“they can be done in the dark”).

Rationale: Students understand how individual sounds are combined to form words and
their awareness of sounds is heightened. It is an important foundation for students’
ability to sound words out and write them.

Content:

• Rhyming

• Segmenting sentences into words

• Sentences words into syllables

 • Segmenting words into phonemes

• Blending phonemes into words

• Manipulate phonemes

Instructional Strategies

• Use it as a warm up (should be 10 minutes per day)

• Focus on one skill at a time and scaffold difficulty of words and sounds

• Use pictures

• Use manipulatives

• Make it kinesthetic

• I spy

Online Resource: http://reading.uoregon.edu/pa/

Notes:

Part II: Phonics: The understanding of the sound/symbol relationship of letters; letters
and letter combinations represent specific sounds. Phonics is printed as well as oral. It
should be taught explicitly and systematically.

Rationale: Students know what sounds each letter(s) represents as well as regular and
irregular spelling patterns so they can fluently combine the sounds to form words.

Content:

• Alphabetic Principle: letters represent sounds that are combined to form words.

• Individual letter-sound knowledge

• Word families (-at, -it, -op)

• Blends (br, tr, gl)

• Digraphs (sh, th, ch)

• Vowel combinations (ea, ai)

• Word endings (-ed, -ing)

• Phonological Recoding (aka decoding): using letter/sound knowledge to sound out

words.
Instructional Strategies

• Introduce continuous sounds (m, s) and most frequently used letters early

• Introduce some short vowels so words can be made

• Connect phonemic awareness and phonics instruction

• Introducing New Material

o Warm Up with a song and a kinesthetic activity for entire alphabet

o Establish purpose and tie to big goal of reading

o Introduce specific sound

 My Aunt Sally

 Grab Bag

 Realia

 Flashcards

 Brainstorm

o Model blending and segmenting using that sound

o Model differentiating between sounds

o Preempt common mistakes

• Guided Practice

o Differentiate between focus sound and not focus sound: Students can hold
up the letter card if they hear the letter or hold up a thumbs up or thumbs
down.

o White boards: I am obsessed with white boards because the kids love them
and you can have every student practicing without wasting a lot of paper. Go
to Home Depot and for about $13 you can buy a huge sheet of Tag Board,
which they will cut for free into 1x1 white boards. Call out a letter, a sound,
a sight word, a blend, ask for the initial/middle/ending sound of a word and
have students write it.

o Goo Bags: This is a fun variation on the white board activity that the kids
love. Get brightly colored hair gel or lotion at the dollar store and put a few
squirts into a Ziploc bag. Tape the bags shut with packing tape so they do
not leak. Call out a letter, a sound, a blend, or ask for the initial/middle/end
sound of a word and have students write it on their goo bag. *Tell them the
goo is poisonous so they don’t try to open the bag.

o Choral read: Put flashcards up and read them as a class.

 o Mystery Word: Write words with the focus skill on index cards. Reveal each
letter on at a time and as you do, students say the sound. Then they blend.
(Hint: Cut the end off of an envelope or fold a piece of paper over to make a
sleeve. Put the cards inside and slowly slide one out one letter at a time.)

o Alphabet vests: Make sandwich boards (like they use in advertising) with the
upper case on the front and lower case on the back or blends, etc. Students
wear the sandwich board and you create words as a class. When you touch
their head, they say their sound. Then you blend. (Time-saving option: just
have the kids hold a letter card instead of making the vests).

o Inside-Outside Circle: Students form two concentric circles. The inside circle
holds a letter/blend/word card and the outside circle rotates around and gets
quizzed. Then they switch.

o Bump the Monkey: Like Inside-Outside but students are in two lines; one
line are monkeys and one are teachers. Teachers quiz monkey, then
monkeys bump down and rotate.

o Draw a picture: Make a list of words that have the target skill. Students
must read them and draw a picture. Or they can brainstorm words and draw
pictures.

Online Resource: http://reading.uoregon.edu/au/au_teach.php

Notes:

Part III: Centers & Small Group Activities

Rationale: Students can practice what they learned and deepen their understanding
through cooperative learning at their own pace. Meanwhile, the teacher can pull small
groups.

Instructional Strategies

• Get organized!

• Practice procedures and slowly scaffold toward independence

• Group heterogeneously and pull homogenously

• Make centers that are “never ending”

Some of My Must-Have Materials

• Sheet protectors and dry erase markers

• Letter cards and magnetic letters

• Alphabets (on sentence strip, mat)

 • Picture cards with words on the back

• Magnetic tape and a “Magic Wand”

• Trays with post-it labels for sorting

Center Ideas

1. Matching and Sorting: I do a lot of variations of matching and sorting activities with
letters and sight words. Matching is lower on Bloom’s and is good for pure visual
recognition. For example, students draw a lower case or upper case letter (magnetic,
card, alphabet pasta, flower to a stem, etc.) and find its match. Sorting is more
challenging. Give students a picture and have them sort it by initial sound, ending
sound, word family, etc. Make it harder by making all the letters for that sort have
similar sounds or look the same (sort between W and Y or words that start with p, d,
b, and q).

2. Busted: Put words with the focus skill on popsicle sticks and then write “Busted” on a
few sticks. Students take turns to pull out a word and read it. If they read it correctly,
they keep the stick. If they get busted, they all put their sticks back and start again.

3. Highlighter Word Search: I put photocopies of books or newspaper articles in a thick

sheet protector. Students reach into a bag and choose a letter, blend, or sight word
(whatever you want them to focus on) and then search the passage looking for it.
They circle it with a white board marker. It’s never ending because they keep erasing
and choosing something else to look for.

4. Fishing: This is a variation on sorting. Write a word that is an example of a specific

phonetic principle (short vowels, blends, silent b, word family, etc.) on a card. Attach
a paper clip or a piece of magnet tape to each. Use a piece of paper, container, or
plate as a label for the categories. Students lay out the words and use a “Magic
Wand” (attach a magnet to a stick or pencil) to select a word and sort it under the
proper label. You can use this for anything including sorting by initial sound, ending
sound, blend, rhyming, part of speech.

5. Jenga: Use labels to write letters, blends, words, or sight words onto jenga blocks.
Students pull out a jenga piece and read the sound/word.

6. Graphing: I take empty tissue boxes, cover them with wrapping paper, and then use
masking tape to tape an index card with a specific letter, blend, or sight word on each
side. Each student gets a graph with a column for each thing they could roll. They
roll, say the sound or word, and then color in one square for that graph. At the end of
the center, they can see which one “wins.”

7. Build a Word: Students choose from a deck of pictures and use magnetic letters or
letter cards to build the words. For checking, you can have the word on the back. You
can group the pictures by phonetic skill to differentiate and target a specific skill. For
example, short vowel pictures (jet, hat, pig) or blends (chip, shop).

8. Board Game: Students roll a dice or flip a counter and move spaces. They read the
word on that space. If they miss the word, they move back to the beginning. You can
color code these for difficulty and skill level to differentiate.
9. Library Center with Phonics Phones aka Tubaloos: Books can be sorted by skill level
and specific skill. You can make the phones out of PVC piping or buy a class set.
Students read a decodable book that practices a specific skill and they can hear
themselves without disturbing others.

10. Write the room: Give students a clip board, a dry erase marker, and a paper inside a
sheet protector. On the paper, write out the letters or letter sound you want them to
find. They can walk around the room and write down examples.

11. Word Family Tin: Put a vowel and several consonants inside a breath mint tin (or
other container). Write a list of words that can be made from those letters.

12. Word Family Eggs: Write onsets on one section of the plastic eggs and rimes on the
other. Children match eggs and turn around to blend the sounds. They can write the
words they make on paper.

13. Rhyme puzzles: Print out pictures of rhyming words and glue them to index cards or
get a poster of rhyming words and cut the pairs so they fit together. Students can
match them.

14. Type it Out: Glue a copy of the key board (attached) or slip it into a pocket protector.
Put in a list of words and students say them and type them.

15. Listening Center

16. Computer Center

Online Resource: http://www.fcrr.org/Curriculum/studentCenterActivities.htm

Notes:

Part IV: Songs & Websites

Rationale: There is no need to reinvent the wheel, and good songs can go a long way to
embedding the knowledge in your students’ brains! My students learned their letter
sounds in large part from Dr Jean’s Alphardy song. The combination of the song and the
kinesthetic movement is great!

• Alphardy by Dr. Jean

(http://www.drjean.org/html/monthly_act/act_2005/03_Mar/pg04a.html)

• Rocky Lettercise by Dr. Jean

• Who Let the Letters Out by Dr. Jean

• Zoo Phonics

• www.songsforteaching.com songs for teaching

• www.starfall.com for a center

• http://www.hubbardscupboard.org/literacy.html for printable booklets and center

ideas
 • http://www.lessonsense.com/phonics/flashcards.html for flashcards

Part V: Tracking & Investing

Rationale: Tracking allows us to celebrate successes and plan for reteaching and
instruction in the most meaningful ways possible.

1. Whole Class Tracking

• Mastery of individual skills

• Reading level improvement

• Example: Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Tree

2. Individual Tracking

• I Can folder

• Book in a Bag

• Checklist for each skill

Online resource: www.tfanet.org and the Resource Exchange