Phonics

Phonics is a key component to literacy instruction. Once students have mastered phonemic awareness, they are ready to move on to phonics, the application of their phonemic awareness skills. While phonemic awareness is an oral skill, phonics brings the relationships between letters and sounds to the written word. There are several teaching strategies that both teachers and parents can implement with their students and children to develop that child’s literacy. For example, for strategies that teach letter and alphabet knowledge activities such as providing opportunities for students to write their own names, using a birthday chart to study letters in other students’ names as well as using and making alphabet books in the classroom can be implemented. Engaging children in meaningful writing and reading activities as well as talking about the relationships between letters and sounds will build students' phonics knowledge. The use of these strategies in any primary grades classroom will truly help students develop knowledge of phonics naturally.

Please view our resources listed below.

**Articles & Books** -University of Oregon's Center for Teaching and Learning has created a website for the Big Ideas in Beginning Reading. Included is information on the alphabetic principle, or phonics, including research and examples of phonics instruction. Other big ideas such as phonemic awareness can be found at this site. http://reading.uoregon.edu/big_ideas/au/au_what.php

-The National Reading Panel's publication on early literacy. Includes information on phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency and vocabulary. A must-read for any literacy teacher. http://www.nationalreadingpanel.org/publications/researchread.htm

-Reading Rockets' take on phonics. http://www.readingrockets.org/article/254

**Websites** -Starfall and More Starfall take students from the ready to read stage to reading. Includes phonemic awareness, sight words and sign language. As students read short stories they can click on a word to hear it pronounced. http://www.starfall.com/

-This is a great website that lists several teaching strategies for phonics instruction. http://student.fgcu.edu/red6656/publish/page6.html

**Videos** -This is a video of letters and sounds for the alphabet. Example: a, apple, short a sound http://www.teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=63261

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">-Reading Rockets offers clips from their PBS TV series on reading instruction. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">http://www.readingrockets.org/article/3409

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">**Lesson Plans & Activities** <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">-A ReadWriteThink lesson plan for 1st grade that develops students' abilities to use analogy-based phonics. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/diddle-diddle-generating-rhymes-216.html

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">-A ReadWriteThink K-2nd grade lesson plan based off of the book //Word Wizard.// <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/word-wizards-students-making-150.html