We all know that older kids don’t want to be singled out. And when their classmates are reading chapter books while they are still struggling with phonological awareness, then doing activities that aren’t engaging or fun can really reduce student buy-in! Luckily, there are some great activities that you can do to get your students excited about phonological awareness! Let’s take a look at some activities for the most basic areas of phonological awareness- rhyming, segmenting, and blending!
Individual Sounds
- Start with words that have one letter per sound.
- Use letter tiles to point to the letter that represents each sound.
- Use letter tiles to match the letter to the sound that you make.
Rhyming
- Use cards with pictures to play games like rhyming memory match, rhyming Go Fish, or Race to Rhyme! Race to Rhyme can be played with two students. They flip over all the cards at the same time and then race each other to match up the rhymes.
- For more advanced students, you can play a game called Third Rhyme. Students can play one of the games above but can score extra points by adding a third rhyme. For example, if they match the cards “cat” and “hat”, then they can score another point by adding the words “bat” or “rat”.
- You can also do rhyming Bingo or rhyme sorts.
Segmenting Words Into Syllables
Segmenting syllables can be tough! Fortunately, there are some ways to make it fun!
- Start with two-syllable words.
- Play a game like Jumping Syllables. To play, identify the syllables in the word, and then switch them around to make a nonsense word. For example, the word “apple” would become “pleap”.
- Use a token to count syllables. Teachers can provide each child with tokens and two or three boxes drawn on a sheet of paper. The children place a token in each box from left to right as they hear each syllable in a word.
- Do mixed-up syllables. Write each syllable on a notecard, and then have the students put them in the correct order.
Syllable Blending
- Create a sound wall. Students can review the sounds that letter groups commonly make with the sound wall. These walls generally include the sound and examples of words that use that sound.
- Use notecards for syllables. Students can use these syllables to make real and nonsense words.
- Have the students play a game where they have a pile of syllables and try to make more words than their partner.
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