Welcome to Phonics Explorers! This course is designed to help learners expand their beginning phonics skills as we learn to blend, segment, and decode CVC words with a focus on short vowel sounds. As part of the phonics portion of class, learners will be explicitly taught how to read two target sight words each week. Our target sight words will be used, along with CVC words, to build decodable sentences that learners can read independently! 

The lessons in this course are interactive and designed to reach all learners whether they learn best through auditory, visual, or kinesthetic means. I believe that learning should be fun! The classes will include rhymes, games, songs, and movement activities to keep your learner engaged. 

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   Class Structure & Activities
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-Welcome Song
-Phonics Warm Up: Oral practice of phonemic awareness skills. (This practice will include things such as identifying rhyming words, counting the number of words we hear in a sentence, identifying the first/middle/last sounds we hear in a word, and adding/deleting/substituting sounds to make new words.)
-The target short vowel sound of the week will be introduced. Learners will practice blending CVC words that use the target short vowel sound. This portion of class follows the I do, We do, You do method to scaffold learning as we practice blending sounds to read.
-Extend: During this portion of class we will move from reading single CVC words to looking at how they are used in context. Our sight word of the week will be introduced and used to build simple sentences. 

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       Muting During Class
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Please make sure that your learner knows how to mute/unmute themselves prior to class. I prefer to keep all learners unmuted to add an interactive element to class. However there may be times that learners may be muted during class to minimize background noise and facilitate direct instruction.