Category Archives: letter tiles

Two games make phonics fun for beginning readers

Posted on August 22, 2022 | Leave a comment

With young students, games are the easiest way to maintain interest and learn at the same time. I’d like to suggest two games to teach beginning reading (CVC words). Neither game is new, but both attract youngsters, from my experience.

One game is BLAH BLAH BLAH Word Game, Level 1000. This game consists of three sets of playing cards, color coded according to level. Each card consists of one word printed in the middle, and individual letters of that word printed in the corners. A player needs to match one letter on a card in his hand to one letter on the face-up word in the middle of the table (hat and tug, for example).

This game has three levels: CVC words; CVC words with blends; and words with long vowels (oa, ai, ee, oo, etc.). It does not include words ending with silent e at the 1000 level. When a player matches a letter, he must place his card over the face-up word already played and read the word aloud. The next player must match one of the letters on the just matched card. However, other cards (skip a turn, take four cards, change order) allow a player without a match to play. The first player to play all his cards wins.

I have played this game with an about-to-start kindergartener, who sounds out each word as he plays. He uses the “joker” cards strategically to stop a player from winning or to enact revenge on a player who interferes with his goals. But it could be used with a child learning his letters but not yet able to read words.

The only drawback I have found is the size of the cards. For little hands, regular-sized playing cards are too big to fan. Too bad the deck isn’t smaller-sized.

The other game my almost kindergartener and I like is Zingo! Each player receives a BINGO-like card with six words printed on it. However, one of the letters of each word is missing as in “_ig” or “c_t.” A player must take letter tiles distributed from a machine-like device and use them, one at a time, to create words by covering the blank spaces on his card. Consonants are black and vowels are red. The first player to cover his card wins.

This game offers two levels, one on each side of the BINGO card: CVC words and CVC words with blends. The machine-like device which distributes the tiles is attractive to little hands, and can easily distract a youngster from the purpose of the game. This game is harder than the previous game since it requires the child to read several incomplete words at each turn and to try to figure out where placing a tile makes sense. For beginner readers, this requires help.

I like to use games like this at the end of a lesson to extend the lesson time. Little kids have short attention spans, so ending a lesson with games like these continues the learning.

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Posted in beginning readers, blends, consonants, CVC words, double vowel words, letter tiles, methods of teaching reading, methods of teaching spelling, phonics, practice reading skills, silent "e" words, Spelling

Teaching ĭ CVC words and ĕ CVC words

Posted on May 30, 2022 | Leave a comment

Ĭ and ĕ are the two hardest vowel sounds to distinguish. Here is how I suggest you work with children to differentiate these sounds. Mix the ĭ CVC words with the previously learned ă, ŏ, and ŭ CVC words. Then mix the ĕ CVC words with the previously learned words, not including the ĭ words. Lastly mix only the ĭ CVC words with the ĕ CVC words. Repeat these steps indefinitely until your child can read the majority of ĭ and ĕ CVC words correctly. Learning the ĭ and ĕ CVC words can take longer than the other three letter sounds combined.

Sample ĕ words

bed	fed	led	red	Ted
beg	egg	keg	leg	Peg
Ben	den	hen	men	pen
bet	get	jet	let	pet
bell	dell	fell	Nell	sell
Bess	less	mess	Tess	yes

Sample ĭ words

bid	did	hid	kid	lid
big	dig	fig	pig	rig
dim	him	Kim	rim	Tim
bin	din	fin	pin	tin
dip	hip	lip	quip	zip
bit	fit	it	pit	zit

Problem: Distinguishing between nearly identical sounds and words

Short ĕ and short ĭ are difficult sounds to distinguish for most beginning readers. When I teach these sounds, I rely on two game-like activities.

For one of the activities, I gather the pictures of words which start with ĕ and ĭ, or which use them in the CVC pattern. I put these Ee and Ii cards in front of the child and we practice saying those letter sounds. Then the child sorts the deck of cards I have created, putting cards under one of the two letter sounds. We say the word aloud to reinforce the letter sound.

For another activity, I have created BINGO-like cards of ĕ and ĭ words. I limit each BINGO card to nine words. More words can seem overwhelming. I say one of the words and the child finds and covers it, using a marker. To extend this activity, the child and I exchange places. The child says the words and I find the correct spelling.

big	beg	dig
set	sit	bet
lit	let	bit

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Posted in CVC words, letter sounds, letter tiles, methods of teaching reading, phonics, reading readiness., reading strategies, short vowels, teaching tips, vowels

Learning to read, one sound at a time

Posted on May 8, 2022 | Leave a comment

A six-year-old kindergartener learning to read VC and CVC words worked with me yesterday for the first time. We met the day before via zoom. He was nervous, sitting on his grandmother’s lap for support.

I started by assessing his phonics skills. Because he doesn’t know me and has not worked online, his responses to the phonics assessment I did might not be spot on. After a few lessons, when he is more relaxed, I will have a better idea of his skill level.

But for now he was able to show me he knows letter names, consonant sounds and short vowel sounds. He can sound VC words easily. When he reads CVC words, he cannot “slide” all the sounds together to form words. So that is where my reading instruction will begin.

Yesterday we worked using letter tiles. I put before him the word “at,” and then I added one onset letter sound at a time, forming words like “fat” and “rat.” He sounded out words from several word families using short a, o, and u. After 20 minutes, his squirming became excessive, and we ended the lesson. Today I will teach him again for another short lesson.

His grandmother showed me a “beginner” picture book the boy has, but as is often true, that book is not a good “beginner” book for students learning phonics. In that book, advanced reading words are mixed in with sight words and CVC words. I recommended she set it aside for a few months.

She wondered if she should use flash cards with words printed on them to help her grandson learn. If the words are sight words which cannot be sounded out phonetically—words like “are” and “the”—then yes. But if the words are capable of being sounded out, I said the student should learn them by sounding them out. Otherwise he might think he should memorize the look of a word to pronounce it.

Should he guess at words? No. If a child learns to read following the rules of phonics, eventually he will be able to sound out almost any word, even long words like “dinosaur” and “alphabet.” Teaching a child to guess introduces a habit which will hobble him the rest of his reading life.

This student has learned to read the way phonics experts recommend, sounding out each letter. With time, almost all CVC words will become sight words for this student and he will no longer need to sound them out. But to reach that stage of reading, he needs practice sounding out words.

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Posted in books for beginning readers, consonants, guessing at words, letter sounds, letter tiles, methods of teaching reading, phonics, practice reading skills, reading strategies, reading tips, short vowels, sight words, teaching online, teaching tips

How to teach words using ă and ŏ

Posted on April 11, 2022 | Leave a comment

Suppose you have taught your child the 16 consonant sounds which don’t vary at the beginning of words: b, d, f, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, qu, r, t, v, x, and z. Now you are ready to teach vowel sounds.

Explain what vowels are

Because you will be using the words vowel and consonant with your child as you teach, make sure you take time to explain what these words mean. Vowel refers to five letters all the time (a, e, i, o, and u) and two letters sometimes (y and w). Consonant refers to all the other letters and to y and w most of the time. For now you can leave out the y and w, but when you teach small words like by and now, mention that y and w act as vowels sometimes.

Should you say short / closed vowels? Or long / open vowels?

Today many support materials refer to vowels followed by a consonant in the same syllable (cat, hot) as closed vowels. Years ago these vowels were called short vowels, and they were pictured with a curve over the vowel as in ă, ĕ, ĭ, ŏ and ŭ. Similarly, vowels coming at the end of a syllable (go, hero) are today called open vowels by some reading support workbooks. Previously they were called long vowels and pictured with a horizontal line over them as in ā, ē, ī, ō, and ū. I will use the terms short and long since those are the terms most parents recognize. I will use markings over vowels such as ă, ĕ, ĭ, ŏ and ŭ when referring to a particular short vowel sound and ā, ē, ī, ō, and ū when referring to a particular long vowel sound.

Naming vowel sounds as short or long is important because we need a vocabulary to use with children when we refer to vowels pronounced like their letter names and vowels pronounced more softly. Whichever terms you use, make sure your child understands them.

Teaching words with a ă sound

While you are teaching the 16 consistent consonant-letter sounds, you can begin to teach one short vowel sound. I recommend starting with the letter ă because almost all phonics support materials start with the vowel ă, and because ă might be the easiest short vowel sound to master. The support materials I suggest for my students are the Explode the Code series. That series starts with ă words.

When I am teaching in person, I use flash cards with pictures of words beginning with ă such as alligator, astronaut, and apple. I recommend you teach your child to say “ă as in apple” to reinforce the letter connected to the sound.

Choose five or six consonant letter sounds your child has mastered. Using letter tiles, form two and three letter words such as am, an, at, bat, bam, tan, and mat, etc. Place the letter tiles for one word an inch or so apart and ask your child to say the sounds, keeping the picture of the apple on the table too, for reference. Repeat saying the sounds as you slowly move the letters closer and closer together until the child says the word. It might take many tries, but usually there is a Eureka! moment when the child realizes she is reading a word, not just letter sounds. Reading teachers call these tiny words CVC words, meaning consonant-vowel-consonant words.

Gradually add more consonant sounds and form more words with ă as the vowel sound. If the child loses interest, one way to extend the lesson is to use her name and write a goofy sentence such as Kim is a pan or Kim is a map. Another way is to use your name and have her end the sentence. Mom is a ____. Teach her that the vowel goes first or in the middle. Try mispronouncing a word she writes and ask her if you said it correctly.

You can buy magnetic cards which you can cut into small rectangles to attach to the back of letter tiles. Then you can work in a metal lasagna pan or pizza pan or on the refrigerator. If your child is four or five, a short lesson (ten minutes) teaching in one mode followed by another short lesson in another mode (writing words on an iPad or laptop, writing in a workbook) might be all she can handle for one session. I have given one-hour lessons to a four-year-old, but I needed to have six mini-lessons to sustain her interest.

Teaching words with a ŏ sound

When, after several days or weeks, you are sure your child can read ă words, move on to ŏ words. Create a reference card—an octopus, for example. Work on two and three letter ŏ words such as on, off, odd, Oz, nod, fob, and Bob, etc. After several days or weeks—whatever it takes—mix ŏ words with ă words.

To reinforce your work, read together picture books. When you come to a word she can pronounce, point to it and ask her to say the word. Two or three times are enough to show her that what she is learning applies to her real world.