PhOnics

October 01, 2016
Short O PhOnics

My students have been LOVING our phonics crafts - from the bAgs to the vEsts to the mIttens to the "pet" Octopus (which can apparently also be worn as bracelets according to one of my sweet firsties)! Each week they make my teacher heart smile with how excited they get about the activities.  

 We started with our word hunt Friday morning and then made our octopus to help us remember the short O sound.


Andrea Sign

First Grade Short I Activity

September 24, 2016
It's a raining day here so I thought I would light a few of my absolute FAVORITE fall candles and write a little bit about what we did in phonics this week.  
If you have not ever had these candles before, you MUST try them!! The pumpkin spice scent is my absolute favorite!! It just smells like Fall! 

This week my first graders spent learning about the short I phonics sound.  We ended the week by creating these short I mittens.  The students LOVED this activity! As I was prepping the next step of the craft I overheard one little boy saying "oh, I think we are going to be able to wear these mittens! Cool!!" They were SO engaged which meant that they really were on the look for the phonics aspect of the craft (because that allowed them to then make the mitten).  I would definitely recommend integrating phonics visuals into your phonics curriculum if you do not already do them - they first graders look forward to them, enjoy them, and form a connection to refer to when thinking about the phonics lessons.  


     
Andrea Sign

Hey, ShortE!

September 17, 2016
I love, love, LOVE our First Grade phonics activities! The students are always so engaged with the stories, the activities, and love the craftivities that accompany the units!!

This week we were learning all about the Eggsellent Short E sound.  We read about Ted's Egg Adventure, hunted for colored eggs that were hidden in the hallways of our school, sorted the eggs between "good eggs" and "bad eggs" (good eggs had a short e word inside, bad eggs had a word with no short e), and made Short E Egg Vests to remind us of our fun adventures learning about the short E sound! 

The Egg Vest consists of a short E word hunt (glued on the back).  They then chose some of these short E words that they found, wrote those words on the eggs, drew an illustration, and then assembled! 

 You can get templates for the vest and other short E activities here.

Andrea Sign

Phonics Phun!

September 09, 2016
"Get those littles to read!"

Phonics is such an important foundational skill that students need. Phonics allows children to be able to read and the ability to read then allows them to take even more ownership of their learning. 

A strong foundation of the phonemic sounds is imperative!! 

Phonics is a big focus in my classroom.  We do many different activities to constantly reinforce the skills the students have learned.

Each week we learn a new phonics sound.  To introduce the phonics sounds, I share with the students a story.  For example, the story of Nat the alligator who LOVES apples!


After that story, we add our new phonics sound to our phonics board.

Then we come up with a phonics chant that incorporates movement (something we as a class come up with to help us remember the sound) and words to help us remember the sound.  We also create an anchor chart with words that we can think of that have that vowel sound.     


Then each morning for the remaining days of the week, the students walk in and begin working on their Phonics Interactive Notebooks.  
You can get the short A Phonics Notebook freebie here.

 During the week, typically during literacy stations/Daily 5, the students hunt for words in their books and/or around the classroom.  They need to find 10 words throughout the week.  Depending on the week, this is sometimes a fast finishers activity.  I love these word hunts because they begin to see the sounds in their world around them and the hunts are also super easy to differentiate.  



During literacy stations/Daily 5, students also have an opportunity to complete games and puzzles based on the the phonics sound of that week AND the previous phonics sounds we have learned.


At the end of the week, each student creates a phonics visual that was connected to the story that we had read at the beginning of the week and incorporates their word hunt. 
Andrea Sign