PA/Phonics Practice Sheet

You asked for it

I designed this sheet as an organizer for working with my five struggling readers.

These five readers know most of the letter names and more than half of the sounds; however, they are not fluent in naming the letters or recalling the sounds. So we start off by practicing both of these skills. I have found that working with two similar students at the same time improves their fluency. They have to point to the letters at the same time and produce the name or the sound. They try hard because they want to stay together, harder than they would try if they were working one-on-one with me.

The section with the pictures covers four skills: 1) telling the first sound in a word, 2) segmenting all the sounds in a word, 3) choosing the letters to match the sounds they hear, and 4) using proper formation to write each letter. All five of these students could long ago tell me the first sound in a word, but since learning to segment words and tell all the sounds, they struggle with the easier skill of saying just the first sound in the word. Has anyone noticed this with their students? Once we start focusing on the latter, going back to naming just the first sound is all of a sudden difficult (even with my higher readers). That’s what I’ve noticed anyway and thus the reason we practice both. After segmenting, the students try to write the word on their own. I am there to guide them as needed and to encourage them to write the letters the way we’ve learned in class. After we work through how to write the word, I give them a chance to write it again, by themselves, on the back of the paper.

I know that these students can blend two-letter words (vowel followed by a consonant), but need more guided practice with saying and blending the sounds for consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words. Thus, the next section has CVC words to practice reading. This part would be easier to do with students one-on-one, but as I mentioned, I like to work with students in pairs because they motivate each other to work harder and faster. Because each student will struggle in different ways, I usually have them take turns trying to read the CVC words rather than do it together.

The last thing you see on this sheet is decodable sentences. I sometimes skip this section. If students struggle too much with reading single CVC words then it isn’t appropriate to have them try the sentences. The latter is not yet in their zone of proximal development.

I am sharing a video of me working with students using this sheet. There are 25 other students that I am also keeping an eye on. I’m sure you’ll feel, as I do, that it would be better to do this one-on-one. But there’s that thing called time, so I settle for pairs. I know you all understand that teaching is sometimes rushed, sometimes messy work; however, working through this organizer two- or three times per week seems to be giving the students a good boost.

I usually use this same sheet for three meetings, doing one picture each day. I do not recommend doing it all in one sitting.

There were many Busy Bee Kindergarten readers who saw an example of this practice sheet and asked to purchase it or to get a copy. I am including a link here to the google document. It will not be editable when you open it. You’ll need to go under File and click on make a copy, and then you’ll be able to edit it as you wish. For example, you might want to change the letters, change the pictures, change the CVC words, and change the sentences at the bottom each week. I will make more, collect them in a folder, and eventually make the entire folder available.

PA/Phonics Sheet

Let me know if you have any questions or ideas!