Boost Your Phonics Lessons: 4 Engaging Activities for Extra Practice
Practicing phonics skills is crucial for young readers, but sometimes they think it’s boring. But don’t worry! This post offers 4 engaging activities to make your phonics lessons FUN! From tactile materials to games, these easy-to-do activities will have your students mastering phonics in no time! Let’s get started and make phonics a blast!
First, Review
Taking some time to review phonics skills at the beginning of the year is like building a strong foundation for your young readers. It allows them to shore up basic skills like letter names and sounds. It also sets them up for success in decoding new words, especially CVC words or those that include consonant digraphs, like “sh” or “th.”
Review first with short teacher-led phonics lessons in small bursts. We know whole-class review isn’t too thrilling so then move into fun review activities. Start with games!
Games
Solve the “boring” aspect of phonics lessons with games! Kids love games, so practicing sounds and letters becomes more fun, doesn’t seem like work, and they stay engaged. Games are also social, allowing kids to learn from each other while they listen and play.
The “I Have… Who Has?” game transforms phonics review into a lively and fun group activity! Students listen for clues based on sounds, letters, or word families, fostering active listening and phonics mastery.
Bingo is a fun and interactive way for first graders (or anyone) to review phonics skills! They can listen for words with specific sounds, letters, or digraphs to mark their cards, keeping kids engaged and practicing phonics. I like this free online website to make bingo cards.
Matching Mania: For this game, use index cards and print out some pictures or clip art from the web. Write short CVC words (consonant-vowel-consonant) on colorful cards. Divide the class into pairs and have them find the matching picture cards. This reinforces letter-sound relationships and builds visual memory.
Treasure Hunt/Read the Room
Phonics Treasure Hunt: After your phonics lessons, hide pictures or flashcards with words around the classroom. Students go on a hunt. Each picture or word could represent a specific sound, digraph, or skill. This adds movement and more engagement to phonics practice.
Keep reading for more strategies!
Hands on Materials
Any of these materials can make your phonics lessons and review more engaging:
- Magnetic letters (the linked ones are my favorite)
- shaving cream
- bingo chips
- pom poms
- witch fingers,
- googly eyes on popsicle sticks,
- spider rings)
Here are some activities you try using those materials:
Using Magnetic Letters
- Phonics Builders: Students use magnetic letters to create CVC words, words with consonant digraphs, or specific word families. This hands-on approach reinforces letter-sound relationships and spelling skills.
- “I Spy” Phonics: Hide magnetic letters around the room and have students use clues (“I spy a letter that makes the /b/ sound”) to find them.
Spelling in Shaving Cream
- Sensory Spelling: Following your phonics lesson, get out the shaving cream! Squirt some on a tray and let students write letters or words with their fingers. This multisensory approach is a fun way to practice letter formation and spelling.
- Guess the Sound: Have students write a letter in the shaving cream, then let classmates say the sound the letter makes. Include consonant digraphs in this practice!
Sound Boxes
- Segmenting Sounds: Provide students with sound boxes (see picture below) and bingo chips or pom poms. As they segment (break down) the word into its individual sounds, they push up a chip or pom pom in each box. This visual representation helps them understand the number of sounds in a word.
Fun Phonics Pointers
- Engaging Exploration: Let students use witch finger pointers, googly eye rings, popsicle sticks, or spider rings while pointing to sounds or words during reading activities. These tools add fun and get students to focus.
- Phonics Detectives: Students can use their fun pointers to do “detective work” by searching for specific sounds or word families within text.
Ready to Go Activities from Teachers Pay Teachers
For phonics lessons, wouldn’t it be convenient to have ready-to-use activities and resources from Teachers Pay Teachers? This phonics review is perfect for back to school or any time your class needs a review or you need to work with small groups at the teacher table.
What skills are covered?
- Tapping and blending CVC words, words with digraphs, and the FLOSS rule words
- Identifying last sounds
- Identifying medial vowel sounds
- Identifying and sorting words by initial sounds
- Counting phonemes
- Decoding practice using lists of words and phrases
- Reading and illustrating CVC words
- Rereading words to support orthographic mapping
Let’s check out the activities!
Students can use these tap and blend pages to practice reading VC, CVC words and words with consonant digraphs.
These fluency strips will help your readers build confidence and reviewed what they learned previously.
This activity sneaks in fine motor practice: students will cut out the images and match them to the beginning sound. Answer keys are included for all relevant pages. That will make these activities great for a substitute to manage or so paras or volunteers can do the activities with your students!
Here, students will look at the picture, say each sound in the word, and dot or mark each sound. Then they practice spelling the word.
These activities helps kids identify vowel sounds and practice putting it all together. On the left, the look at the word and fill in the missing vowel . Then they read the words, and circle the matching picture.
The activity on the left has students look at pictures and identifying and circling the final sounds. There are multiple sounds! On the right, students read the word and draw a picture to match.
Finally, roll and read practice is included for CVC words and decodable sentences!
This first grade phonics review resource is new at Teachers Pay Teachers as of the beginning of August! If you grab it, pleae take a moment to leave some feedback. It means so much to me!
Other blog posts you may want to check out:
- Essential Tools for Enriching your Reading Curriculum
- Tips for Teaching Writing
- Unlock and Master ELA Lessons with Engaging Interactive Notebooks
- Capitalization Made Easy: Practical Strategies for Young Writers
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Let me know if you have any other fun ways to practice phonics skills!
