Phonics Lessons / Resources

simple PPT to practice reading short vowels

Hello! not sure if this is in the right place, but I made go fish cards (could also be used for memory/other games, or as flashcards) to be used with the fun fonix (amazing phonics books available free online, google it!) book 1. The card set has every noun from the book.

I printed the cards out and laminated them, and have been playing the game with students as a review for the words/sounds learnt in the book... hope someone finds this useful!

I'm made an alphabet finger chart for students to follow along as the listen to the song. It actually worked really well since my students (up to grades 3 and 4)  have really been struggling with reading and phonics in general so I hope it helps someone else. Also to make it a little more interesting, I had students come up in turns to the TV and follow with a pointed stick (or a fly swatter...whatever you have) as the song played- made it a little bit more competitive as students wanted to out-do each other! 
I think maybe the file for the song is too big for me to download but here it is on youtube!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffeZXPtTGC4

Ok, so here is my question to all you lovely people out there.  I have been asked to teach my elementary 3/4 split phonics.  I've found lots of phonics programs and resources (obviously there are a ton in this thread) but what I'm not sure about is how much of the lesson should I dedicate to teaching phonics?

Looking through their English class grade 3/4 text book they are learning some hard consonant sounds and some short vowel sounds.

The details of the class are that I see the kids once per week for 40 minutes. 

I'm free to do whatever I want in the after school class so in theory I could do phonics for all the lessons for the rest of this semester if I wanted to.

So my questions are:

1. Would you suggest going through ALL the phonics sounds or just the ones that Korean learners have problems with (a/e/i/b/v/p/f, etc)? 

2. How much of the lesson would you dedicate to phonics (the whole lesson or just a portion-say 20 minutes)?


Thank so much for any insight!

Hi I am new to this site and to elementary teaching, so this material is really useful. Thanks.

Ok so I made a short vowel sound lesson.

I used vegfedge's svs ppts and combined them into one.  I'm teaching 3/4 so they know a lot of the words but I don't think they really understand the connection between the sound and the letter.  To be honest, the ppt was a bit dry at that length so if you can find a fun way to deliver it I think the kids would like it.  I'm a bit on the boring side.

After the lesson ppt, I played a 4 corners game. 
Game play: I read a word.   The kids then had to go to the corner with the letter that made that sound.  If they were right, they kept playing, if they are wrong they sit down.  The first 5 words are really easy but they found it more difficult when the words contained the sound rather than started with the sound.  Anyway they are here if someone wants them :)

In this bomb game the teacher says a word to the students and they try to spell the word using what they know about phonics and the letters at the top of the screen.

All of the words are three letter words and I think they follow basic phonics rules.

It is important to review the sounds of the letters before starting this game. It doesn't matter if the kids have seen or heard the word before it is the teachers job to enunciate the word so that the kids can hear the sounds in it and use those sounds to spell the word.

Remember to go over the answers to the pictures so that you know what word to tell the kids when that picture shows up.

Calibrated for about 3rd or 4th grade, depending on how much phonics they have been exposed to.

Ok, I haven't actually gone through the ppt with the kids yet.  This is for my grade 3/4 after school class.

I have a hard time with phonics because a)I came in half way through the semester so I'm not clear what the previous teacher taught them, and b) its hard to find a balance between the fact that they are new language learners but are not really young so the material can't be to babyish.  I'm really trying to focus on the sounds produced not the letters.  I asked a child what sound b (in banana) made and he had no idea.  so that is why i'm starting from the beginning. 

Anyway, this is material adapted from http://jollylearning.co.uk/
For the "homework"  I've set them up each a profile on http://www.teachyourmonstertoread.com/

I plan on signing in as a "test" profile and showing them the introduction and how to play the first game.  I feel that they should be able to figure it out from there with that instruction.  Because it is set up with me as the instructor I can monitor the progress of each kid.  I found it amusing and I'm 31 so hopefully they will enjoy it.

The power point:

- I start by introducing the letter sound and the action which we will practice.
- Then I show a letter, a word and a picture.  When I point to the letter they say the sound and do the action, when I point to the word they say the word and finally when I point to the picture they say the starting sound, do the action and say the word.
- After that I should them a word like __in, have them say it, then ask them "what word do you make if you add  "p" (sound not letter), pin (show them a picture of a pin), what if we take away "p" and add "t," tin-show the picture of the tin.

then I'll introduce the "homework"

you can download the sounds from http://jollylearning.co.uk/gallery/audio-2/

Ok today we did ck, e, h, r, m, d and reviews s, a, t, i, p, n

I just went through the power point and made them do the sounds and actions.  after the review/intro ppt.  we played the mario game.

The mario game is one that I got from this thread. (it's awesome by the way).  I'm sorry I can't remember the original posters name but it was pretty early on in the thread.

Anyway, for the slides with the letter 'n' for example, I had them make the sound, do the action and say a word that started with the letter.  (it didn't have to be the word on the slide my kids said 'no' but the word was 'net'-didn't matter).

The slides with the action pictures: they had to form a word using the sounds associated with the picture.  example HANDS was spelled out using the pictures for the actions from Jolly Phonics.

Similar to that was a picture + part of a word.  Example "picture for 'rrrrr' + ag=rag.







This is material adapted from http://jollylearning.co.uk/
you can download the sounds from http://jollylearning.co.uk/gallery/audio-2/

Not sure if any of these are actually helpful to people but I'll keep uploading them....
g, o, u, l, f, b







Thanks to the original creators of the games!
This is material adapted from http://jollylearning.co.uk/
you can download the sounds from http://jollylearning.co.uk/gallery/audio-2/

I thought that I would share a great way to teach phonics. Teach using song. I will add songs and ppts as time permits.

Saw on Genki English and a few other places where they recommended using motions when teaching the sounds of the alphabet to help them remember the sound.  Hence, I made this really simple PP to use when I introduce each letter so that I can introduce a motion in addition to the sound.  Each slide is a single letter and is paired with a word and picture.  You can use the word & picture to link the motion to the letter & sound.  For example, for the letter H I show a picture of a house, and then introduce the motion of holding your arms above your head in the shape of a roof while making the H sound.

this time was  ai, j, oa, ee, or, ie

Basic intro ppt with review of the other sounds and introduction of the new sounds and actions.

Game was the listening game based on Nooners game.  I modified her ppt, so thank you.

I had a list of words in part one.  I read the whole set of words then read them again where they had to repeat.  If a student repeated the word that did not contain the sound I got the point.  If they repeated only the correct words, they got a point.  I just introduced prize sheets so everyone got a stamp if they won and  they got homework if I won.
part 2 was going to be the same except I wasn't going to read the list twice.  Basically, I would say the word, say the same word a second time and on the second time they would need to repeat it or not.   We ran out of time though, so I only got through part one

As a side note, if you've  downloaded these any feedback would be appreciated and helpful.  Positive or negative.  I realize the intro ppts are very Spartan but I have 20 lessons to prep per week and it becomes time consuming.

Thanks to the original creators of the games!
This is material adapted from http://jollylearning.co.uk/
you can download the sounds from http://jollylearning.co.uk/gallery/audio-2/

Phonics Battleship

Across the top: a, e, i, o, u, y, w
Down the side: gl, cl, bl, pl, fl, gr, br

They can color in their boats on the bottom of the paper and keep track of their partner's on top. To choose a box, students have to make a word starting with those letters (i.e. apple-blue). You can change the letters to anything you want!

REALLY basic phonics pptx for camps/ remedial classes. I can highly recommend using alphabet magnets, jenga and the "pirate/ barrel" game for making phonics practice fun. They have to say the letter; sound (e); "sori" (에) and 1-3 words starting with the letter (elephant, egg, end) to play their turn.
Another game is to mix up alphabet flashcards (the A4 ones) and get them to re-arrange in the correct order. If you have a vocab lsit in the back of your teaching manual, photocopy and cut up the words, and get the kids to sort the words correctly according to it's beginning sound.
Board race: divide the class into 2 teams. 1 Ss from each team gets a turn to play. You will need a fly swatter/hammer or the like. T says a word "k-k-kilogram" or just "kilogram/ kangaroo" as you progress, and kids have to run up to the board and hit the starting letter.
Alphabet dominoes to match capitals (demunja) and lower case (seomunja).

I had to do a bunch of phonics related stuff over the course of the winter "camp" classes.

Once of the most successful activities was this Sounds Tree Pair Activity though. The students sit paired, back to back. Laminate or ensleeve the pages and provide each pair with two pages, one marker and one wet tissue. One student marks a path from top to bottom. They then pass the marker over their shoulder and read their way down the tree carefully. The listener traces their path. At the end, they must check that they reached the same ending (they're numbered). The tree is forgiving so its possible to make one mistake and still "win", but too many and you're out of luck. If they reached the same ending, the pair then turn around and check their paths before swapping reading/listening roles.

Use this as a production activity after teaching, drilling and practising tricky phonetic pairs as a class. The example trees provided work with long and short vowels, voiced/unvoiced consonant pairs, consonant sounds not in Korean and final consonant sounds.

The ones students struggle with the most are:

• Distinguishing the short /ɪ/ as in 'hit' and the long /i:/ as in 'meat' or 'these'. You'll have to teach 'i', 'e_e', 'ee' and 'ea' to test students on this. It's an uphill battle as you'll be unteaching them things gleaned from their surroundings. See, Koreans love to make puns on these word pairs due to their similarity in Korean. I can count three examples of /ɪ/ /i:/ merging in shop window slogans on my way to work alone! And let's not forget Busan's infamous beach festival.
• Final consonants. Start with final 'p' and have students read out words ending with p in front of a piece of paper. If the paper flutters then they're set. After that, explain that all words in English end with our mouths open a little (unlike Korean) and have students work on final 'm' and final 'b' opening their mouths in a silly exaggerated manner after finishing the word. Ensure they don't also append a schwa (으) to the end nor make the paper flutter on unaspirated sounds.

This activity will practise both the physical aspect of making the sounds as well as basic reading skills and common digraph recognition.

* * *

Another really successful activity was a Running Dictation Using Dr. Seuss. I grabbed the school's copy of Red Fish Blue Fish and bookmarked a few passages. Passages with nonsense words and names were preferred. It's a great book for short vowel sounds and C-V-C patterns.

The key here is that I wrote on the board every single word in the passage that was not something the students could guess with their expected phonics knowledge. Be strict with yourself on this. So for example, even though 'like' is not a sight word (l + i_e + k), if the students are 3rd graders or beginning 4th graders they haven't yet been taught the Magic E rule, so it must be written up. Don't forget common words like 'who' or pretty much anything ending with a vowel unless you've taught students specifically how to sound these words out. The end goal is that students are equipped to sound out and guess the spelling of any word you throw at them.

Then, set up as per a normal running dictation. Clear desks with one pencil, one eraser and one piece of triple-spaced lined paper per group. Nothing else whatsoever. Have the students number out the lines on their paper. Choose a team leader. The team leader will run up to you, politely ask for a line ('Line 1, please!") which you whisper in their ear. Finger count the words/syllables if they're lower level (fingers pressed together for multiple syllable words). Then they run back and relay it to their group. Anyone but the team leader may write the line. Then, they must change team leaders for the next line. Don't rush the explanation and be strict with the clear desks policy, else it'll become a shambles (even with adults!)

The beauty of this activity is the incredibly low resource prep. You only need a copy of the book and some lined paper. That's it. Then you just sit on a desk in the corner and chill whilst the students do their thing.

* * *

The kids loved this, but it was a pain to set up. I tried the Phonics Fastball from the JLP Book.

The gist of the activity is that you write up the alphabet or print out some alphabet flashcards and arrange them haphazardly and jumbled up on the board. The students work in pairs/groups to take turns standing behind a line and throw a beanbag at the letters to spell out words. They're scored based on the length of the word, but they must use each letter they hit (in any order), so misses mean thinking up a new target word on the fly.

The problem with the game in its base format is that it has little to no value as a phonics teaching tool. Most of the longer (thus  higher scoring) words the students have studied in the textbooks are sight words and they'll inevitably gravitate towards spelling those out, reinforcing the misconception that English spelling is random.

As such, I used the flashcards attached below and had the students always hit two consonants and one vowel sound, then rearrange them into a word. Consonant sounds are coded green/blue and vowels red/orange. Point values were chalked up on the board next to each flashcard for scoring and rejigged each round. Put up whichever monographs, digraphs and trigraphs your students know. I'd refrain from sticking up the w or y consonant cards. If they miss and hit an unintended card, get them to continue on anyway and take a stab at a possible nonsense word. If its a real word that they don't know yet, but they sound it out correctly, tell them this and still award points.

I created these worksheets at the beginning of this school year from the Jolly Phonics approach.  Having really low level students who don't go to hakwon is difficult because all the phonics learning was pretty much on me and the homeroom teacher.  Not sure how often the homeroom teacher practiced with the students, but I told her to practice everyday with flashcards and start making small words immediately. 

The program starts with S, A, T, P, I, N
You can do a sound a week or more, if you like. Personally, I'd do at least 2 or more sounds a week if possible depending on the age of the students. 

With just S,A,T,I,P letters, you should start making words as soon as possible.  Once they have mastered them, go on to the next group.

I also created a PPT, Sound Stories, that goes along with the worksheet to help reinforce the body motions and sounds.  I'm attaching the PPT and the worksheets.

Please note that unfortunately, I have not finished quite all of the sounds/letters.  It's over halfway completed, but feel free to finish the rest. 

If you finish them, please repost on here the new ones^^  I'm going to attach the Phonics Handbook so that someone may actually finish the rest of the sounds if they need/want to--which I'm hoping will happen.

Also, feedback on how well it's going(or not going) would be especially nice^^ I'm so happy to finally give back to a community that really helped me in the beginning of my teaching in Korea.  Hopefully this will help someone!  Have fun with it and get into the body motions with your little ones, they'll have a blast : )

Made these PPTs to go with the fast fonics book 1.
Short i is missing for some reason. Sorry about that.

Here is a link for long and short vowels:

http://www.stickyball.net/phonics.html

I've made a phonics PPT that consists of phonics vocab intro and two games.

1st game: bomb game (got it from another person and just added it to this ppt)

2nd game: chair game.
break the class up into teams, depending how big your class is put chairs around the classroom with the flashcards above the chairs. have the students stand in a line and the teacher will have the flashcards so the students can read the card aloud. Then, they will look for the flashcard above the chair and sit there. If another student gets the same card, they will Rock, Scissor, Paper with the student sitting, the winner sits and the loser goes back into line. I usually do 2 minutes per round and go up to 3 rounds. Count points based on who is sitting on the chair from which team they are on.