Every single week, I get a message in my inbox asking for lesson templates and activities for teaching phonics in a small group. The problem is that there are so MANY things out there, that we can easily get overwhelmed with what to use.

If you have been around here long enough, then you know that I have always said phonics instruction should be explicit and systematic (that's what research tells us), but it should also be CONSISTENT!

So why does phonics need to be explicit, systematic, and consistent?

Our ultimate goal is to teach students to decode effectively and efficiently as early as possible. This is why the activities we do should be CONSISTENT. We don't want our students having to learn a new game or activity every time they come to our table (although games on occasion are a must). We want them to know exactly what to expect so they can focus all of their brain power on learning HOW to read.

That's why I am so passionate about the lesson I am about to share with you! It is EXPLICIT....SYSTEMATIC... and the activities are CONSISTENT from week to week.

I like to break my phonics lesson down into three main categories.

Review and Warm Ups
Explicitly Teach New Phonics Skills
Application of Skills

Today I am going to share the first category with you! Next week, we will dive into the other two.

Warm Up and Review Skills:

Phonemic Awareness

Phonemic awareness warm-ups are one of the best ways to “warm up” our students’ brains for decoding. My friend Savannah Campbell from Campbell Creates Readers says “You cannot do in print what you are unable to do orally.” When we take a few minutes to practice phonemic awareness, we prime our students for the decoding practice they will be doing in print.

You can make these warm-ups fun and engaging. I recommend doing this, especially with your emerging students (short vowels).

Once students have a strong understanding of blending and segmenting, I like to move to these 3 Minute Phonemic Awareness Warm-Ups.

Three-Part Drill

Visual Drill

When using a visual drill, the teacher flashes previously leaned sound cards at the student and the student then orally provides the sound. This helps students become more automatic.

Auditory Drill

In this drill, students are asked to spell the sounds they hear. These too are previously taught sounds and help connect the phoneme and grapheme. Students hear the sound and then say the letter and sound as they write it. This approach should be multisensory. Here are some of my favorite multi-sensory approaches.

Blending Drill

By placing previously taught sounds on a blending board, teachers can help students practice reading words and patterns. When conducting a blending drill, teachers change one sound at a time either at the beginning, the middle, or the end of a word. The teacher then points to each sound as the students segment them. The teachers and students blend the sounds to read the word. This will help them become more automatic.

Review Previously Taught Skills

One important component of phonics is REVIEW! We cannot teach a phonics skill and then forget all about it, right? For this portion of the lesson, I like to add fun activities. Some of my favorites are:

Roll and Read
Fluency Grids
Sentence Level Games
Sentence Pyramids
Re-reading decodable texts

Another great way to review is through a vowel intensive!

Vowel Intensive

The goal of the OG Vowel Intensive Drill is for students to master their short vowel sounds. Daily practice will ensure that students have a solid understanding of short vowels. This step may not be necessary every single day. I try to incorporate it at least twice a week. To complete this activity, I simply give students a sound or syllable. They must decide what vowel they hear and hold that sound up as they say the letter and its sound.

While this may seem like a lot, we can never underestimate the power of review! Our students need a TON of practice when learning phonics skills and these skills have to build upon each other. This is exactly why we have to make time every single day to review.

Now, I know what you are thinking, so I am going to put your mind at ease right now. I do not do every single activity that I discussed in this blog post each day. I mean, it’s just not possible. Here is an example of what my week might look like for the first part of my lesson.

Monday

Phonemic Awareness Warm-Up & Three-Part Drill

Tuesday

Phonemic Awareness Warm-Up & Review Skills

Wednesday

Phonemic Awareness Warm-Up & Vowel Intensive

Thursday

Phonemic Awareness Warm-Up & Three-Part Drill

Friday

Phonemic Awareness Warm-Up & Vowel Intensive

Next week, we will be talking all about part two! We will look at how to explicitly teach phonics skills and how to ensure our students can apply those skills through both decoding and encoding.

Structured Phonics Lesson Part One