Letter Fluency Freebie
We have a saying in our family... no backtracking. Forgot the milk? too bad we are not backtracking. Forgot your hairbrush? No backtracking... forgot your shoes? Well, that's a tough one.. Anyway.. you get the point. Forward progress!
Here it is the end of October and our kinders are working hard learning letter sounds and how to blend and segment phonemes. I think sometimes, we feel the need to rush through letter sounds in order to get to "reading" but, this can often cause issues in the future. If we don't take the time to explicitly teach letter sounds and give our students the space they need to become fluent with them, we might find ourselves backtracking later in the year.
It is not enough for our students to know their letters and sounds. We want them to be automatic. But, let's face it, the old drill and kill can get pretty boring. After you have explicitly taught a letter and sound, it's time to make it stick. That's why we love these games that are fun and engaging for our kiddos!
Why We Love It
One of our favorites? 5 Tally Fluency! Students will work on fluency by reading and re-reading the letters and sounds with a partner and race to the finish to win! What we love about this game is the more they practice, the more fluent they become (which we know leads to good fluency), but in a fun way that isn’t mundane or feels redundant. This game can be done in partners and as an independent literacy center. If desired, it can also be done independently.
How to Play
Print out a copy of the board game for each student. Consider laminating these so you can have them on hand for future use.
Player #1 rolls the die and reads the letters/sounds that correspond to the number they rolled.
He or she will read the letters/sounds and put a tally mark next to it.
Player #2 rolls and follows the same steps.
The first player to get a line with 5 tallies wins the game!
