Synthetic Phonics Activities and Worksheets

(Worksheets are lower down the page)

• Crossbow Education (UK)
A range of games and photocopiable materials designed by experienced special needs teachers for helping overcome literacy and numeracy difficulties. Established in 1993; widely recommended in the UK by specialist teachers and other professionals. Crossbow Education. - 'An amazing range of phonic games, puzzles, matching cards, etc..' John Bradford, Direct Learning.

• Mrs Alphabet (US)
Online resource designed for teachers of children aged 3-7. This site was created by Anne Lynch, an author and creator of children’s books, learning tools, and educational materials to assist kids in early learning and successful progress in alphabet recognition, phonics and beginning reading. This website contains a variety of lesson plans, links to other beneficial sites, a newsletter, and a section for kids structured around the alphabet. This site has another interesting feature called the classroom. In this section, there are multiple ideas about creating word walls, name activities, alphabet jobs, calendars, and it provides sample portfolios for teachers to view. Mrs Alphabet

• GO Phonics (US)
Teacher-developed to provide struggling and natural beginning readers with a strong foundation for decoding the English language. Skills are taught sequentially, one step at a time. With over 70 components, Go Phonics features 48 games that integrate with its workbooks and decodable storybooks. Go Phonics

• Sound Discovery (UK)
A synthetic phonics program for the teaching of reading, spelling and writing. It is suitable for first-time learners, slow-to-start and dyslexic learners of all ages, including adults. It has proved particularly effective with boys’ writing. The program grew out of a basic concern that certain Secondary Schools had found that around one third of Year 7 intake were unable to fully access the curriculum because of difficulties with literacy. Sound Discovery

• Sound basket: For each new sound put several pictures and/or objects in a basket and introduce the sound using these resources. Letters can be used in several fonts.

• Find the word challenge: Hide a CVC or four-letter word somewhere in the room. Give pupils several clues about the word and the winner is the pupil who finds the word and can read it.

• Writing letters: For handwriting, if you use two colours to form a letter it makes it easier for the pupil to see the starting point and the correct letter formation.

• Magnetic boards: Put out extra letters for children. It is useful to have several of each vowel and consonant for children to work with.

• Laminated letters: Laminate large A4 letters and pupils can trace, use playdough and trace paint over these.

• Tracking: Use sheets with lots of letters in both upper and lower case. Ring the same letters with the same colour, e.g. every 'c' in yellow.

• Newspaper hunt: a) Pile of newspaper headings. Find and cut out 'sound of the day', then stick it on paper. b) As above. Find all the letters you know, who can find the most in a set time?

• Adrian Bruce Games - a wide selection of games and wordcharts to print out and cut up.

• Musical Spelling Rules - FREE fun online songs for learning some of the spelling rules - 'Recommended' (John Bradford).

Free Stuff on the Net - My son asked to learn to read just a few months before age 4. He had been sounding out signs and food packages and such for a few months and we had drilled him in basic phonics. He learned to read in one weekend when I agreed to show him how; he just needed that help for about a day, and never needed it again. There's LOTs of free phonics on the Net. Don't even bother to buy any pricey packages, it's not necessary. Just get a marker and a big package of 3 x 5" cards and make your own. Do a Google search on "free phonics". ;-> (Steve TX)

Garage Sale - Our son was showing reading readiness but not much interest as much as a year ago. Parental efforts to encourage reading were seeming to turn him off further. Hubby ran across a copy of Hooked On Phonics at a garage sale in the fall and picked it up for $5 [!]. Anyway, after using it for about two months, my son is joyfully moving into reading. Hubby stopped using the Hooked on P. and moved to word flash cards while I've been encouraging him to read me a page or selected parts of our evening story time books, alternating with my reading. We thought the investment was well worth it, especially since purchase of a new version would have been out of the question, financially speaking. (Sue, NY)

Phonics Activities

• Grocery store letter hunt. There are lots of large signs at the grocery store ("Produce" "Dairy" "Sale") that parents can use to point out letters. Next time, have the kids point out letters to you. Street signs provide a similar opportunity.

• Footprint letters. Draw a letter in snow or sand and ask your children to guess what letter it is. Then have them retrace your footprints to walk out the shape themselves.

• Snack-time letters. Serve foods that can be shaped into letters or decorated with letter shapes, including spaghetti, string cheese or carved letters in peanut butter.

• Treasure hunt. Hide candies near several objects around the house that all begin with a particular letter sound. For example, tell your children that candies are all hidden behind things that start with the M sound.

• I spy. At home or out, say to your children, "I spy something that begins with the M sound." Encourage them to guess what it is. When they do, ask them to challenge you the same way.

• Letter-sound collage. Save old magazines, catalogs and newspapers that have many pictures. Have your children search through these materials to find as many pictures as they can that begin with the M sound. Once they've collected them, glue the images to a piece of paper. Then you can write a large upper- and lowercase letter that makes that sound somewhere on the page. (Palm Beach Post)

• Hunt the Letter Sound. Children search for the letter sound in the story books around the classroom and on the alphabet chart.

Online Synthetic Phonics Activities

• StarFall - recommended free online phonics activities with good visual and auditory effects.

• The Sounds of English - comprehensive lists of words containing the same sound.

Worksheets for Synthetic Phonics

• Photocopiable Worksheets (UK)
By Hilda King Educational. Using the concept of fruit trees, in which the pupil fills in missing letters/words, these worksheets help teach a variety of vowel and consonant combinations. Available from Hilda King.

• 'Where Is?' and Consonant Digraph Worksheets
FREE online worksheets with colorful pictures to print out.

• Primary Resources (UK)
Source for a range of useful worksheets.
Primary Resources

Feedback

No Computer Games! - I can't recommend any specific games, but my advice would be *not* to use a computer game. At this stage (and many others) the human/socialization factor is as important as the lesson fundamentals, and no computer program can provide that. Computers are nifty tools and learning *aids* - but no substitute for a living breathing parent/teacher. (O.L., Sydney, Australia).