Phonics

Spotlight Series Part 4- Phonics

I hope everyone is having a wonderful summer! This week was crazy and I am just now sitting down at the computer...whew! I can't believe that the 4th has come and gone...sigh. Anyway moving on...

We do phonics right after calendar and morning meeting from 8:20-8:50. I start with their new sight words for the week and we go over them together and use each one in a sentence. Then I introduce (if it's Monday) their new phonics sound. We call it our "Phonics Focus" and I always start by saying "Our phonics focus this week is ...." So that they know what follows is important information :). On Monday I say the phonics focus and then on Tuesday-Friday I make them say it. We talk about the type of sound it is (long vowel, digraph, blend, diphthong, etc) because I think it is important that they know! We then brain storm a list of words with the sound. Depending on the sound we watch a BrainPopJr. video (I just love them and so do my kids!) After we talk about the sound then I dismiss the students back to their seats for a phonics activity. Sometimes it is just using the words in sentences, rainbow writing the words, or an activity that I found on TPT :) 

All of my word work centers for Daily 5 are focused on their phonics sound. So they practice them during Daily 5 at least 3 times a week. 

I touch on phonics again when I pull my groups to the back table for guided reading. We usually play a game with the words or say silly sentences like, "She sells seashells by the seashore". While we read we look for words that have the phonics sound we are working on. Most of my students are good and phonics so I usually only have a handful that need remedial and extra help with the phonics sounds. With those students I use the decodable readers that came with our reading series. Those texts focus solely on a particular phonics sound and are great for the struggling kiddos. 

That's phonics is our classroom! What does it look like in yours? Link up with Kelli over at Castles and Crayons to share!