Fun Phonics

Fun with materials!

This term, we have been having fun with phonics by using hands on materials like modelling sand, magnet letters and lego blocks. 

As you can see in the video, my students have been learning their word families by clicking together the correct families with lego blocks. This has been for children reading in the red-green levels. It has been a fun activity for children to do independently but has also been a good tool during small group reading time. For example, if we have been learning the -ay word family, I would only pull the -ay words out of the basket and use them in that reading session. The children have enjoyed playing together and as you can hear in the video, they've been able to help each other while playing.

Another fun activity we have been doing is modelling sand word families. Children press magnet letters into the sand to create the word families of the day. 

**One thing I realised is that I need to be careful with which magnet letters I give children. As you can see in the video, I gave a child a capital Y, so when he wrote the words, he wrote saY, waY, daY etc. This was a good learning point as I can see that they are still learning about capital and lower case letters. 

Make it, write it, say it...

Children use their iPads to take photos of what they have made and then write the words several times.  When writing on an iPad, I have them write with a stylus so they can get practice physically forming the word. Muscle memory is important! Other days, I may have them write the words on a whiteboard or with chalk outside. Finally, they record themselves saying the words several times. After this, they can play with the word family blocks to support what they just learnt.