Episode 12: Phonics Lesson in Action Part 1
When preparing a phonics lesson, we need to be sure we’re conducting it in three parts: a warm-up, explicit teaching, and application of skills. Below, you’ll find the first part of the lesson (the warm-up) and its four parts: a visual drill, an auditory drill, a blending drill, and a vowel intensive.
Before the Warm-Up:
Before beginning the official phonics warm-up, we must warm up with some phonemic awareness.
This is because the two are directly linked, and it’s up to us to bridge that connection for them.
We want to be sure we’re using words that will also be the focus during our phonics warm-up to prepare their brains for what’s to come.
All phonemic awareness warm-ups should take only about three minutes.
Simple phonemic awareness warm-ups will include exercises from its three main components: blending, segmenting, and isolation.
Blending: “My word is ‘c-a-t.’ What’s my word?
Segmenting: “My word is ‘cat.’ Can you sound out the sounds you hear?” This is also a good time to use manipulatives!
Isolation: “Listen carefully. Cat. Where do you hear the /a/ sound?”
Phonics Lesson: The Warm-Up
Keep in mind that, ideally, these drills should be practiced together if time allows. Oftentimes, days are full of distractions and we don’t have the time. If necessary, it’s okay to do two of these drills one day, followed by the other two the next day.
Visual Drill:
Grab an ABC deck of cards full of sounds they already know.
Flip through the cards and have the students say the sounds (short vowels, digraphs, blends, etc.)
Auditory Drill:
This portion focuses on writing.
Students can use a salt tray to write, a Canva screen, a whiteboard, or pair up with a partner to write on their backs.
Grab their attention and say, “How do you spell mmmmm?”
Students write the letter Mm on their tray, screen, board, or partner’s back and say /m/ repeatedly as they write it.
Blending Drill:
Some materials that might be useful are: grapheme cards, blending boards, or a whiteboard.
Using whatever tool you’ve chosen, practice blending words by flipping over cards to make words or by drawing a quick grapheme box on a whiteboard and blending that way.
A great tip for this portion of the warm-up is to review previously-taught words. If you’ve covered short a and short i recently, choose words like cat, man, jam, kit, sit, and bin.
During this portion, we can do more than just simply blending - we can manipulate! Try writing the word “cat” on a whiteboard and change it to say “bat”, then change that word to say “bit” and so on.
Vowel Intensive:
This is a chance to review short vowels on three levels: sound, syllable, and CVC
Grab a vowel strip (strip of paper that has A, E, I, O, and U on it) or make vowel tents by folding note cards in half and writing one vowel on each.
Take them through each level:
Sound: “The sound is /i/.” Students point to the vowel i or lift their i tent and say “I say/i/.”
Syllable: “The syllable is /ab/.” Students then point to or hold up the correct vowel and say, “A says /a/.”
CVC: “The word is ‘bet.’” Students point to or hold up the correct vowel and say, “E says /e/.”
A Word on Review
Review isn’t necessarily a drill that’s a part of the phonics warm-up. But rather, we must be sure we are weaving review into all of our exercises and activities.
Students will not be masters of a phonics skill if we teach it to them one week and never again.
The review allows for students to decode with automaticity. Once this happens, students can become fluent.
Fluency means that they no longer need to decode each word, and their brains are free to think of other components of literacy like comprehension and vocabulary.
Pull activities from the previous week to incorporate review into your routine!
A review of sight words is also important. Once we have explicitly taught them heart words through phoneme-grapheme-mapping, then we can pull out the flashcards for review.
Helpful Phonics Resources:
Phonics Reading Roadmap: phonics instruction with the science of reading in mind. Learn how to teach systematic and explicit phonics instruction.
Kindergarten Roadmap: focus on letter sounds and phonemic awareness, and be equipped with tools you’ll use in your small group lessons that will encourage phonics and decoding
Phonics Lessons & Activities MEGA Bundle: includes a scope and sequence, blank templates, phonemic awareness warm-ups, drill cards, sentence pyramids, and so, so much more.
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