Phonics Foundation: Build the Skills Required to Successfully Read and Write!

Each class incorporates research-based activities to help support students' phonological awareness, knowledge of high frequency words, and phonics skills, including solidifying their command of letters and sounds, short vowels, blends, and digraphs.

Over the course of lessons, students will sing songs and play games that help them build phonological awareness. These lessons strengthen students' skills in three key areas: hearing and identifying rhymes, isolating the initial sounds in words, and segmenting and blending sounds.

-Hearing and Identifying Rhymes
The first lessons have students simply repeat rhyming words. Eventually, students move to locating rhyming words. The teacher says a word and students look across a few picture cards to find one that rhymes with it.

-Isolating Initial Sounds
For each letter in the alphabet students will slowly stretch a word down their arm and catch the first sound of the word. For example, if the word is dog, they would say /ddddooooogggg/ /d/ /d/.

-Blending and Segmenting Sounds
Across the unit, students will move from simply blending sounds together to also segmenting sounds. The teacher will provide three sounds of a CVC word, such as /d/ /o/ /g/. Students will repeat those sounds and then blend them together: "dog" In later sessions, students will segment sounds. For example, "cat.” Students will repeat the word and then break it into sounds: /c/ /a/ /t/.

While working on these “core skills" and learning high frequency words each week, Teacher Sara and her sidekick, Bear, will guide the students as they cheerfully sing and play, all the while building the skills necessary to read and write.