How Phonics Activities Are Key To Helping Students Learn To Read

In primary classrooms, helping kids figure out reading and writing early on is super important. That's where phonemic awareness and phonics come in. Phonemic awareness is all about understanding and playing around with the sounds of language, while phonics is about connecting those sounds to letters. When we mix fun activities that cover both, we create a lively learning space that suits all kinds of learners.

Learning to read is a process. Some kids get it quickly, and others need lots of extra practice to make sense of the letters and words in front of them. In a single primary classroom, it is possible to find some kids who don't know their letter sounds and others who are reading at an upper intermediate level.

​How do you differentiate and help make sure that all of these children get what they need in order to be successful and engaged? That is the big challenge for most primary teachers. In today's classrooms, it is also important to make sure that the mental well being of the students is considered as well. This is an enormous task and requires a lot of preparation, creativity, and successful execution of lessons and ideas.

Here are some ideas and possible stepping stones or activities that might help. 
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Making sure that everyone has a handle on their letter sounds and how letters are combined is important and it can be made into a fun activity that can be done as a class. Those that are more advanced can work with a center activity that has more advanced letter combinations while those who are still working with phonemic awareness can do some activities with the teacher as a warmup for the day.

For example: The advanced kids could be working with digraphs or blends, prefixes and suffixes, or even with vocabulary development or a dictionary activity.
The kids needing more help could be working with word families, segmenting words and isolating sounds, doing cvc word activities, or maybe even letter sounds, if necessary.

Guided reading activities and centers help to manage several different activities at the same time and they also help to keep everyone engaged. Check out my post on how to set up and run guided reading groups if this is new to you.

Of course, you will need a good selection of materials and activities on hand in order to provide variety and appropriate materials for each of the different groups. Choosing activities for specific themes can also be a good motivator. For instance, during the winter, kids are excited to see the snow and they love to do activities that are related to it. 

Here are a couple of bundles that I just created of some my winter literacy materials that have that in mind. Click on the images to check them out. 
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You can also get a free sample from my short and long vowels activities here.

If you are looking for a variety of winter reading material for different levels,  here are a few that I have used successfully in the past. I created some study guides to go along with them.
Owl At Home
Emma's Magic Winter
The Kids In Ms Coleman's Class Snow War
​Stone Fox

Click here to get your free copy

Reading is also necessary in other subject areas. Kids need to be able to understand directions for math and science, and read informational text for research projects and social studies. These are just a few of the areas where they may need to read. Again, adding some creativity and themed activities will help them to engage even when the language may be a bit difficult. ​If you want some fun activities to do with math and science, you can check out my recent blog posts for winter geometry and winter measurement.

By blending phonemic awareness and phonics activities and tailoring them to different needs, we're making sure every student gets the support they need to become confident readers and writers. It's all about fostering that love of learning from the get-go!

Next time I will share some specific activities that will help with differentiating and engaging kids as you incorporate phonemic awareness and phonics activities in the classroom.

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