kindergarten – Ms. Morning Joy

What is a phoneme? It is the smallest unit of sound heard in a word. For example, the word bat has three phonemes… /b/ /a/ /t/. Phonemes then combine to form spoken syllables and words.

What is phonemic awareness? It is the understanding that spoken words are made up of phonemes (or individual sounds). Because phonemic awareness focuses only on sounds, very young students can practice phonemic awareness before knowing anything about alphabetic letters.

There are many phonemic awareness skills that will help beginning readers. Here are many, listed in ascending order of difficulty.

Sound and Word Comparison: What sound is not like the others: /m/ /t/ /m/? /t/
What word doesn’t belong with the others: “sat”, “mat”, “cat”, “pan”? pan
Rhyming: What word rhymes with “mat”? sat (or bat, rat, etc.)
Syllable Splitting:
What is the onset (first sound) and rime (all remaining sounds) of “mat”? /m/ /at/
Blending*: What word is made when these sounds are blended, /m/ /a/ /t/? mat
Phoneme Segmentation*: What are the sounds in “mat”? /m/ /a/ /t/
Phoneme Deletion: What is “mat” without /m/? at
Phoneme Manipulation: What word is made when you change /t/ in “mat” to /n/? man

*Blending and Segmenting are high priority skills.

Why use hand signals? Hand signals help students “see” what is orally being practiced. They identify the signal with the type of skill being taught. I have different signals for segmenting, onset and rime, and rhyming activities (for instance). In this video, students are blending phonemes to make words. There are different hand signaling methods out there, but I like using this method for two reasons: (1) students can correlate the number of phonemes with the number of fingers held up; and (2) I can use the non-signaling hand to stabilize my reference material and keep my place! Students can also learn the hand motions and put them to use when trying to blend sounds as they begin to read. Without good phonemic awareness skills, a student trying to read sun (for example) might be able to say all the individual sounds, but struggles to blend and read the whole word.

KINDERGARTEN AND PRE-K

Student Directions Chart and
Jumbled Sight Word Cards (set 1)

Jumbled Sight Word Cards (set 5) and
coordinating Student Recording Sheet

Your students will have fun practicing 38 key sight (and high-frequency) words throughout the school year. This product includes six activities that are perfect for literacy centers or small-group learning. EACH activity has one set of Jumbled up Sight Word Cards, one set of Sight Word Flash Cards, and the coordinating Student Recording Sheet. In addition, this resource includes a Student Directions Chart that has easy-to-follow instructions combined with helpful illustrations that will help even the youngest learners. In all, there are 42 Jumbled Up Sight Word Cards, 42 Sight Word Flash Cards, 6 Student Recording Sheets, 1 Directions Chart, and an Answer Key. Set 6 reviews 4 of the most tricky words that begin with “w”.

Sight Word Flash Cards and Student Recording Sheet (set 1)

Teaching activities in numerical order is suggested. Sets #1-3, introduced at the beginning of the year, have 6 words per activity. Sets #4-6 have 8. The following lists detailed steps students will take to complete each activity:

Choose a Jumbled Sight Word Card from the pile.
Select the alphabet letters shown on the card and unscramble them to
make a sight word.
On Recording Sheet, write the card number in the first small rectangle.
Write the unscrambled word in the lines next to the written number.
Read the written sight word.
Put alphabet letters and Jumbled Sight Word Card away.
Repeat steps (selecting no repeat cards) until Recording Sheet is full.

Although the directions chart illustrates the typical blue and red magnetic letters, this pack can be used with most lowercase letters.

This 27-page, downloadable PDF file can be printed and used immediately. If desired, print pages with reusable elements on heavy, white paper and laminate. This will protect items for years of use!

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