5 Ways to Spice Up Your Phonics Instruction. (Freebies Inside!)
As a second grade teacher, I spend a lot of my instructional time on teaching phonics. My school has recently adopted the Orton Gillingham curriculum and I absolutely love it! My students are making connections that are translating into their other subjects. I am seeing phonics growth like I have never seen it with our previous phonics programs. However, I have one beef with Orton Gillingham. It’s so formulaic!
My students are getting bored with the weekly schedule, that rarely deviates. The multi-sensory experiences that excited them at the beginning of the year (writing in sand, using crayons on screens) now leave them groaning. I have spent the last month trying to find out the best ways to re-engage them into this crucial subjects. Here are 5 strategies I have found that have helped.
Time for Charades!
Charades are a super simple, no prep way to practice phonics wherever, whenever.
All I do, is tell my students that all of today’s charade words will have a certain theme. For example, maybe they are all magic e words today. Then I pull a popsicle stick for a student to come up to the front of the room and I whisper a word for them to act out with the magic e in it. Students are only allowed to guess words with a magic e. This allows students to practice their phonics skills while guessing, and they have so much fun!
Obviously, this trick works with all phonics concepts. I have played charades with open syllables, closed syllables, vowel teams, blends, digraphs, and r-controlled vowels. The students always get so excited to play!
Everyone Loves to Color!
My second graders love to color, and not only do they enjoy it and it offers wonderful SEL opportunities for calming and coping, but it also promotes fine motor skills! Bell to bell instruction and additional curriculum requirements have made it difficult to find time for kids to practice age-appropriate skills such as coloring, but color by phonics finds you an amazing loophole in which you can continue instruction while giving your students some time to relax and reset.
I am sure you are familiar with color by numbers, this activity is similar, but with phonics! Each phonics skill is assigned a color and then parts of a picture are colored to match, based off the word in that spot. My students absolutely love working on color by phonics pages and have been asking for more each week.
If you are interested in this idea, but you don’t know where to start, you can click below to gain access to ten free color by phonics pages! I have created 10 long vowel pages that will help keep your students engaged! Feel free to grab them and enjoy some calming and engaging time with your students (bonus, no prep for you)!
Word Hunts Around the Building!
This is one of my favorite no-prep phonics activities! It is so simple!
Take your students around the classroom, or even better, around the school! I always give my students a skill we are looking for (for example, words with a long o sound in it). Then we take our notebooks and I set a timer for 10 minutes.
As a class, we walk around the school building silently. We are on a word hunt for words written around the school on posters, walls, and/or student work. Students make a list of all of the long o words they see.
When the timer is up we go back to class and count up our words. We make a big list on the board and talk about any misunderstandings we had. Students love getting out of the room and they also get a chance to see how phonics is a part of the world around them!
Get Creative!
This is a silly and quick strategy that my students absolutely love. They beg to do it. However, be prepared for them to get a little grungy, haha. This is an activity best done at the beginning of the day when the floors are clean.
You might need to give students a little context the first time you try this activity. I always show my students photos of the Sistine Chapel and portraits of Michelangelo. We talk about how he must have painted the ceiling like that and brainstorm ideas. Eventually, I show him a painting of him laying down while painting the ceiling. This is how we will be practicing phonics words today!
Next, I have all of my students lay on the ground with their heads underneath their desks. They usually are giggling by then. Sometimes I have them tape a piece of paper to the bottom of the desk and use a pencil, other times I just have them write with their fingers on the bottom of their desks.
I will dictate words that match that week’s phonics skills and the kids write them. It’s simple but effective and engaging! I often play Italian opera while we are doing it. It is a silly activity that kids tend to remember when they come back to visit me years later.
Make it Competitive!
A little friendly competition can sometimes spice up stale subjects! If you have ever played the board game, Scattegories, this is a no-prep phonics version of that game.
Depending on your grade level, you might want to scaffold this activity by allowing students to have a book they can reference for words as well as looking around the room.
I start this game by assigning a phonics skill. For example, we are looking for words with the ai vowel team in them. Then, I set a timer for 4 minutes. Students have that time to brainstorm as many words with that skill in it that they can (this is when references might be handy for the younger ones).
After the four minutes is up, you can have students read their lists aloud. If more than one student wrote a word, they all have to cross that word off their list. The student with the most original words left at the end wins.
I find that this is a really fun game to play in small groups, since that way students have a better chance to have more unique words and earn points.
To Sum it all Up…
We all know how important phonics is for our students. However, sometimes the same old dictation worksheets and spelling tests get stale. Hopefully these 5 no-prep ideas help shake up your instruction and get your students engaged again! Good luck!
-Haley
