Ohhh, phonics skills! As a special education teacher, I have seen the phonics struggles!!! I created this a series of products to help with tricky phonics skills. I originally designed this product to be used in my resource room so the variety in activities and ability to differentiate in both a resource room or a general education classroom is perfect. Here’s a peak at what’s inside!
When students are ready to begin working, a designated student lays out these five clip boards and center cards. I created my own little system for differentiating using what I call “Bubble Pages“. On these leveled pages, students are tasked with completing multiple tasks over the course of the week. Although there are five clip boards laid out, students only complete two to three items based on the assigned tasks from their bubble pages.
The lowest level activity is the Stretch the Word center. In this set of cards, students practice stretching out tricky long vowel sounds by using colored dots. Each letter or letters have a dot representing the sound that the letter or letters make. Students can visit this center as a student led activity that supports very basics of vowel combinations. The recording sheet is extremely simple and allows students to quickly and easily record each sound in the word. I love seeing kids begin to understand how vowel teams work by participating in this center. They begin to see that it is perfectly fine for two letters to go into one box or above one colored dot.
After working on stretching words, students move on to matching words to picture cards. Although this is fairly simple, it is fantastic practice for students who need to remediate and practice basic decoding skills. For students who are slightly higher, I remove the cards and have them only use the picture cards and recording sheet to attempt to stretch out their words correctly.
Moving from stretching out words and being able to write it correctly, students begin to sort words based on the vowel team being used in each word. Students are able to see that there are multiple ways to create the same sound in various words.
And last, but certainly not least, is a student favorite, Write the Room! I hide a set of cards around the room as with any write the room activity. However, I have three different recording sheets requiring students to do various activities with the words that they find. The lowest level recording sheet asks students to write the word and circle the letter or letter combinations that make up the long vowel sound. The second recording sheet requires students to record their words by sorting them by vowel team. Any my favorite recording sheet requires students to write the words that they find on a page says, “If I can spell….” {insert word from the room} “then I can spell…” Students then use their vowel sound knowledge to create a real or nonsense word that would use the same vowel team and word family. This is a TOUGH skill but is a great way to challenge students who are beyond simply sorting words into columns.
I recently updated this product to include both color and black and white version of each center. In my previous school district, we had color printers readily available. I never realized how much some people were paying for printing in color until I changed schools and had to do it myself. Therefore, I created black and white pages of each set of cards.
I hear you on the phonics struggle!
These look terrific – I especially like the "Stretch the Word" page 🙂 Jen
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