When it comes to teaching our first graders how to read we know that phonics is one of the absolute best ways for elementary students to begin to recognize and learn words. But, teaching phonics can become soooooooo tedious for both teachers and our students. Let’s be honest: worksheet after worksheet isn’t fun for anyone.
That means it’s our job to get our students excited about learning phonics in different ways, I swear it’s possible. The good news, there are a ton of fun ways to teach our first graders so they can develop the skills they need to be masters in phonics.
When you make phonics lessons fun and interactive you’re going to see progress being made even with your reluctant learners. I know in my classroom I have students who can pick up on this through guided reading but most of my students really need that hands-on instruction! I have come up with some really fun and interactive activities that are learning-focused that my students just love.
Here are a few fun ways you can get your students excited about phonics, all of these activities can be found in my phonics bundle. This bundle has an entire year’s worth of activities including centers and digital activities for each unit!
Here are 8 exciting ways to make phonics engaging:
- Use dough smash cards, give your students playdough and a little hammer. They will smash the playdough as they move across the card making the sounds. Seriously, my students love this one because… playdough? Hammer? What more can you ask for!
- Spin the word, using the worksheet and a paperclip the child will spin and practice the sound. This activity is super simple but the hands-on aspect makes it fun for them!
- Dot paint phonics, the child will practice writing the word based on the image and use dot markers as they make the sound. Do your students love dot markers as much as mine? They will use them at every chance they can!
- Phonics card with a push pop fidget toy! Practice making the sounds and using the fidget tool as a way to “pop” the sounds. This sensory experience is a great one!
- Magnetic letters on a cookie sheet are great for rhyming activities, give your student an ending -ig, -at, -og and have them practice with changing the beginning letter.
- Kids are never too old for a sand or shaving cream writing center, have them practice letters and sound review or a great opportunity to practice with diagraphs. This activity can easily be adjusted for your classroom needs!
- Play slap the sound with a flyswatter. Try sounding out the word starting with letter by letter and slap each letter with a flyswatter as the sound is made.
- Bring phonics outside! You can write the words in chalk and have the child walk across the word sounding it out as they go.
What I love the most about these phonics tools is that they can be adjusted for blends, CVC words, suffixes, beginning sounds, or whatever your classroom is working on that day. When it comes to getting your students excited about phonics, I think we assume it’s during center rotations but we can also do this during whole group instruction, small group instruction, and independent work. The key here is to get them excited and wanting to learn so that when we move to work with small groups for that individualized attention they will be ready to dive right in. I know different districts have different phonics curriculums but I think we can adapt any curriculum to fit the needs of our students making it more engaging and exciting to learn. I know that teaching kids to read is one of the most important yet challenging tasks a first-grade teacher has. While this comes easy to some of our kiddos others need a little bit more help which is the perfect opportunity to add in some fun phonics games and activities!!!
This school year has been super tough on all of us teachers, and I feel for those of you who are still distance learning. You miss your students, you miss classroom instruction and I can’t even imagine how burnt out you are! Not to mention the added stress of making sure your lessons are still interactive and engaging. I promise you can still provide ways to get your students excited about phonics. I have included a ton of different digital activities that will challenge your students while keeping them engaged even on Zoom.
If you already have a phonics curriculum that you love, check out these phonics centers that you can use with any curriculum!
I am a firm believer that our classrooms should not be a place where our students sit to retain information. School is meant to be engaging, collaborative and a place where learning happens but in a way that makes our students want to be there. Try these in your classroom and I promise your elementary students will actually be ASKING to do phonics work. I truly truly believe at the end of the day if our students aren’t learning, it’s a problem with the way we are teaching. Seriously, it took me a long long time to realize that with a ton of self-reflection. But, my number one goal is to make my students excited about what they are learning because once we have peaked their excitement it’s a snowball effect from there! Let me know some of your favorite ways to get your students excited about phonics.
