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Teaching Phonics in Kindergarten

Why is Phonics Instruction Important for Struggling Readers?

Phonics instruction provides learners with the skills they need to use letter sounds to read individual words. Since phonics skills are needed to decode and read individual words, they are  a critical component of developing strong readers. When a student is struggling to read, it’s often a sign that intervention is needed in the area of phonics. 

Teacher in Reading

3 Steps for Phonics Intervention

1. Phonics and Early Literacy Diagnostic - In order to provide targeted intervention for struggling readers, teachers use diagnostics to assess students skills in the different areas of phonics. These diagnostics usually look at the following: producing letter sounds, spelling and reading individual words. The data gathered from the diagnostics helps teachers to determine students’ strengths and areas of concern before making a plan for intervention.
2. Specific Objective Based Learning - Once the data has been gathered from the diagnostics, teachers can create an intervention plan for helping the struggling reader. This plan should include explicit instruction in the areas of concern as well as many opportunities to practice. Once the teacher has the data from the diagnostics and has provided explicit instruction in the areas of concern, students benefit from practicing these skills frequently at school and at home. Practicing at home not only strengthens reading skills, it helps to build confidence and a love of reading. For an example of a great printable for CVC practice, click here.

CVC Worksheets Printable Worksheets

3. Revisiting the Assessment - This allows teachers to reassess students’ progress towards mastering the areas of concern. This is a great opportunity for students, teachers, and parents to celebrate the progress that has been made so far. If there are still areas of concern, the new data can be used to adjust the intervention plan to meet the needs of the struggling reader.

CVC Worksheets Printable Worksheets

Intervention and extra practice in the area of fluency can occur both at home and at school, which will help to develop the skills and confidence needed to become strong readers. Once students master phonics skills, they can progress to practicing fluency and comprehension. Click here to find more resources designed to support young learners both at home and at school.

Teaching Phonics in Kindergarten

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Elementary Classroom Posters

Elementary Classrooms are famous for being colorful, bright, and full of students' artwork. In addition to the cheerful decor making a classroom feel welcoming, the posters that teachers display in their classrooms can also accentuate and enhance students’ learning experiences within their classroom. When deciding which posters to add to your classroom, it’s important to consider what information will be helpful to your students as they move throughout the school day. 

4 Classroom Poster Ideas

1. Letters, Numbers and Shapes Posters are fantastic, especially for preschool and early elementary classrooms. They help students to quickly recognize letters, numbers and shapes and to remember them long term. As students apply these concepts to more complex skills like reading and math, these posters provide quick reference back to concepts they have already learned. Click this link for Letters Posters to display in your classroom.

Classroom Poster - Numbers

2. Classroom Schedule and Calendar Posters - Having predictable schedules and routines helps children to thrive both in and out of the classroom. Visible classroom schedules and calendars help to remind students what to expect throughout the school day as well as remind them of upcoming holidays, classmates' birthdays, and other special dates. 
3. Emotions Posters - When asked how they’re doing or how they’re feeling, students’ responses are often limited to words like great, fine, okay, or tired. By giving students visual representations and the corresponding vocabulary, an emotions poster in the classroom can help students to grow their emotional vocabulary and to talk about their feelings and experiences. Giving children more emotional words to use helps them to better express and evaluate their own feelings. 

Classroom Poster - Emotions

4. Inspirational and Growth Mindset Posters can contribute to a positive and motivating classroom environment for students. Inspirational quotes provide encouraging reminders for students that are feeling unfocused or stressed. And growth mindset posters help to boost students’ confidence and motivate them to continue working hard toward their goals. This can be especially beneficial as students tackle challenging tasks. Click this link for mindset posters to display in your classroom.

When selecting posters for the classroom, it’s important to remember that students will sometimes be looking around for information to help them to complete a task and would benefit from seeing key information displayed visually.  And at other times, students may have paused due to feeling frustrated, anxious, or tired and would benefit from seeing a poster that could help them to work through those feelings. Having posters that help in each of the situations can help enhance learning socially, emotionally, and academically. Click here for additional posters to display in your classroom.

Classroom Posters

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Sight Word Games for Kindergarten

Sight word games and activities are a wonderful way to get emergent readers excited about learning. Because there are so many ideas for how to do this, knowing where to start can be overwhelming. To help you get started, I’ve narrowed it down to a few of my tried and true favorites.

Sight Word Games for Kinder, 1st Grade and 2nd Grade 

1. Matching Sight Word Activity - Students will match individual letters written on a clothespin to a notecard with the same letter to practice spelling words. This search-and-match activity helps students practice spelling while reinforcing sound patterns as they spell the word. It also helps develop letter-to-word correspondence as we want our students to speak. Click for here more detailed directions on this activity. 
2. Use Magnets to Spell Words - Using magnets to spell words is another matching activity that builds students’ reading skills and fine motor skills. Grabbing and picking up the magnets is especially good for younger learners because they love to touch and move things around. There are many ways to utilize magnets for sight word practice. For an easy and fun example, click here.
3. Rainbow Words - Rainbow words is a calm activity that requires very few materials and is easy to implement. Students write a set of words repeatedly for practice. Each time the students write the set of words, they write them in a new color. This helps students to practice writing and spelling the words while also creating a beautiful rainbow as they write. For a more detailed explanation of rainbow writing click here.
4. Shaving Cream for Sight Words - Using shaving cream for sight word practice is a fun (and messy!) activity that students love both at home and at school. To get started, spread shaving cream on a desk or table and then encourage students to use their fingers to write or reveal sight words.  As an added bonus, your classroom or kitchen will smell lovely! There are several ways to implement this activity, which allows you to adjust the activity to suit your objective. Click here for information on one of the ways you could implement with your students.
5. Sensory Bins for Sight Words - Sensory Bins have become increasingly popular both in and out of the classroom. Children love them, and adding letters to the bin automatically makes it educational. The experience of exploring a sensory bin helps students build thought bridges in their minds as they work on associating certain words to certain themes inside the sensory bin. Because the concept of sensory bins is rooted in creativity, parents and teachers are free to include whatever items they have on hand and/or will suit the learning objective. 
6. Workbooks with Sight Word Games - Workbooks with sight word games can be used in the classroom, but they are also a great way for parents to practice sight words at home with their children. Workbooks give students the opportunity to practice recognizing and writing sight words, through activities like tracing and flashcards. In addition, some workbooks include a variety of games to make practicing fun and engaging such as word searches, crossword puzzles, and roll-look-read. Click here for an example of Sight Word Workbook geared towards kindergarteners.

Sight word games give learners the opportunity to practice and build confidence with recognizing, reading and spelling words in an fun and engaging way.  There are so many options for sight word games that can be played at school and at home. Because most require very little in terms of materials, it’s easy to get started. The only difficult part is choosing which game to play first! If you’re still undecided where to start, Bingo is always a hit! Click here for a great Bingo resource: 

Sight Word Games

Using and Designing the Engineering Process in Elementary School

The engineering process can help students learn concepts and apply those concepts to real world problems. While often just used in structured programs and on field trips, this framework can easily be applied to the classroom with project based learning to engage learners and enhance students' learning. Some examples of engineering classroom projects include a hydroponic plant system that solves the problem of food scarcity, a simple egg drop, or the creation of a website to solve a consumer problem.

The engineering process features six key stages: empathize, ideate, define, prototype, test, and reflect. This process enriches students' learning by applying concepts students learn in the classroom to a real world problem. 

EMPATHIZE

In this stage, students ask a question to solve a problem. Teachers can design problems for any subject area or topic, and these problems can be based in the classroom (theoretical) or in the real world.

Engineering Design Process Activity

IDEATE

Students love this stage as they get to generate as many ideas as possible. In this phase nothing should be off limits, you never know when you might be close to a breakthrough. Getting lots of ideas is crucial to have this stage be worthy of spending time on. This phase could take the form of a classroom discussion or small group breakouts where students brainstorm ways to solve the problem and share back to the class.

DEFINE

Students will then need to plan how they will accomplish their goal to solve the problem introduced. Strong teachers know guiding students through this part of learning can be difficult because students are far from the deadline and have a lot of ideas that they believe can be successful. One way to help students accomplish a plan is to build a graphic organizer for them to fill in. A graphic organizer can help students stay on task and focused on the plan while they work to solve the problem.

PROTOTYPE

In this stage, students have created a plan and collected materials. During this stage, students will build a prototype. This prototype will undergo tests and students will see if their intangible idea can come to life. This phase helps students develop skills that go beyond the classroom as they begin to understand how to logically and efficiently bring an idea to life. Students will use all kinds of ideas and structures to create their prototypes. Students should feel confident to try new things.

TEST

Students will have to decide if their project turned out well or if there needs to be changes made to the prototype. They will make changes to fix a failed prototype,  to create a more successful prototype, or to decide that the project is no longer worth exploring.

REFLECT

During this project, the students could decide to improve the prototype they have or to create a brand new idea. Students enjoy the agency of being able to make decisions as they engage in their own learning and take the knowledge gained in the process and apply it to a new project or to a revision of their original prototype.

When incorporating the design engineering process with your students, it’s helpful to have printables for them to record relevant information as they work through the steps. Click here for the Design Thinking Lesson Plans. This resource provides many options, so that you can print the one that best fits what you’re asking your students to do.

Engineering Design Process Activity

Classroom Desk Plates

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The teaching of phonics has been shown to be one of the most effective ways to help children learn to read. Phonics is the study of the sound units of language and how they are used to form words. When children are taught phonics, they can learn the skills needed to sound out words, which in turn helps them to read. 

There are a number of different approaches to teaching phonics, but one of the most effective is through the use of games. Phonics games are a great way to engage children in the learning process and help them to have fun while they are learning. There are several different phonics games available online, and in this blog post, we will share 7 of the best websites where you can find phonics games for preschoolers.

Why Phonics Games?

There are many different ways to teach phonics to young children. Some parents and teachers prefer to use traditional methods, while others prefer to use more modern approaches. One thing that all parents and teachers can agree on is that phonics learning should be fun for kids!

Most games that children play are not specifically designed to teach them anything. However, we know that children learn best when they are having fun! Online phonics games are a great tool to implement in the classroom and at home because they are easy to access and are specifically designed to help children learn to read. Phonics games are an important part of any reading curriculum, as they can help children to develop a strong foundation in reading skills.

Top 7 Websites for Phonics Games

There are a variety of different types of phonics games, but they all share one common goal: to help children learn to read. By playing phonics games, children can practice learning the individual sounds that make up words, and they can also learn how to blend those sounds together to read words. Interactive phonics games are a fun and effective way to teach children the basics of reading and these websites do a great job of implementing these learning strategies. There are many great websites out there that offer free phonics games for kids both at home and at school. Here are 7 of our favorites:

1. Starfall - Starfall is a website full of interactive games and activities for young learners. The phonics games on this site are designed to help children aged 3-5 learn the sounds of letters and how to blend them to read words. They offer books that can be read online and letter and sound-matching games. This is the site that you want to use if you are looking for a site that offers it all!
2. ABCya - ABCya is a website full of educational games for children of all ages. The phonics games on this site are perfect for helping preschoolers to learn the sounds of letters and how to read simple words.
3. PBS Kids - PBS Kids is a website that provides a variety of educational games and activities for kids. The games and activities are designed to help kids learn a variety of subjects including math, science, and reading.
4. Funbrain - Funbrain is a uniquely illustrated website that provides a variety of educational games for kids. The games are designed to help kids learn a variety of subjects including math, science, and language arts. When it comes to phonics and reading, Funbrain is a great choice as it offers several books that can be read online to practice reading skills!
5. Worksheet Genius - Worksheet Genius is definitely a website that all teachers and parents should know about! This website generates worksheets that can easily be used to create fun phonics games for young children! 
6. Education.com - Education.com offers an endless amount of games for young and older students alike! Their game called, “Ending Sounds Cloud Catch” is one engaging example of the types of games you can find on their website. Players have to listen closely to each ending sound. Then they match the cloud to the specific sound they heard.
7. Splash Learn - Splash Learn is a great online resource for students to intentionally practice phonics. This K-5 curriculum has more than 40000 scientifically designed games that will help students with sounds, spelling, writing, and even math!

Phonics games are important because they help children develop the phonics skills needed to become strong readers.  By playing these games, children learn and practice connecting the letters in written text to the sounds of their spoken language. Phonics learning is a vital tool for early reading success, and it’s a crucial step in developing strong and confident readers. And what better way to learn than through the website games listed above? If you are looking for any offline materials, make sure to check out our store here for more amazing educational content, posters and printables! 

Interactive Phonics Games