Every year I have a couple students who need a little {sometimes a lot} of extra work on phonics. This can be quite a challenge, because that isn’t something I teach in a whole group lesson. I like to create a guided reading group whose emphasis is phonics {and sight words if needed}. In this post, I’ll share some of the resources I use to teach phonics to my big kids.
One of my goals for this school year was to find authentic, engaging, and meaningful phonics lessons for my phonics guided reading group. After a little digging, I found Deanna Jump’s and Deedee Wills’s Guiding Readers pack. This product is geared toward kindergarten and first grade, and if you teach either of those grades I suggest that you run, not walk, to their store to check it out. Amazing is seriously an understatement. I plan to use the word work portion of the pack, because the lessons are exactly what I was looking for. I’m starting with the January edition, because that’s when long vowels are introduced. The units are sold in monthly editions, and there are four weeks worth of lessons for each month. Since I’m only using the word work portion, I don’t see any problem at all with using the January unit in September.
I’ve printed the word work pages and stored them in a pocket page divider. All of the lessons for the week are written on one piece of paper, which I keep in front of the pocket. Then, I store any printables for the week behind the lesson plan. There were just a few pages that I wanted to laminate, so I can use them again year after year. I stored those cards (I made a set for each student) in baggies and keep the baggies in the pocket behind the lesson plan.
Even though there’s just a tiny amount of laminating and cutting, I still like to save time as much as possible by utilizing parent volunteers. I’ve printed the cards I want cut out and stapled the cards to a Ziploc bag. This way volunteers can laminate, cut, and store the cards easily.
As a follow-up activity to my guided reading lesson, I have students complete a page in their phonics interactive notebook. I made this pack to offer extra reinforcement for my students. I like using it after I’ve taught a lesson in students’ reading group, because my students need this additional practice. There are two free weeks in the preview, so you can check it out and see if it works for your students. There are two spelling patterns for students to study each week. I wanted to give students consistent and predictable practice. Yet at the same time, I didn’t want my students to become bored completing the same exact activities each week, so I decided to alternate the activities on a weekly basis.
My students rarely need help with short vowels. Instead, they usually need the extra instruction with long vowels, so that’s where this unit begins. Week 1 starts with long a by itself and a consonant e. Students complete a sort where they glue words with specific word patterns underneath the correct flap.
In the second activity of the week, students use the phonetic rule to spell the words shown on the picture correctly.
The following day, students write the word in a sentence underneath the flap. The word should be spelled correctly. These are all short activities, because they follow my phonics lesson, and I want them to be short and sweet, to give students time for independent reading.
On the fourth day of the first week, students cut out the perimeter of each shape and fold on the dotted lines to make an accordion. Glue the tabs down. Students spell the picture and write one letter on each circle.
On the last day of week 1, students should write examples of words which use the studied spelling pattern underneath each tab. I encourage students to walk around the room to look for examples of that spelling pattern.
In the second week, students continue working on the long a sound, and I add ai and ay to their phonics notebooks. In the first activity, students cut out the individual letters to build the words represented with the pictures. Students should then write the word.
The following day, students should write words within the same word family underneath each flap that is glued in their notebooks.
In the third day of week 2, students fill in the missing letters on the front and use the word in a sentence underneath each flap.
On the fourth day, students cut out the perimeter and glue the middle section only of their foldable. They cut on the dotted lines to create flaps, and then they cut out and glue pictures on the appropriate column. Students should write the word underneath the picture.
In the last activity for week 2, students should write a word that uses the same spelling pattern on each flower petal.
The activities are organized into weeks, where each week focuses on two different phonetic patterns. I’ll pick and choose lessons to review what I’ve previously taught in my guided reading group. I’m excited to see the results of these new strategies, because I think they’ll make a huge impact on my students! You can find the phonics resource here!
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