phonics Archives • Elementary Island

4 Ways to Use Challenge Phonics to Teach Digraphs

Jordana — Thu, 23 Mar 2023 01:07:00 +0000

As ELA teachers, we all want our students to become confident and proficient in reading and spelling English. But English can be a tricky language! If only learning to read English was as easy as learning the letters and their sounds. The next step is introducing digraphs, which can be a tricky concept for many students. But don’t worry, having a structured approach to teaching phonics can help your students become great readers and spellers. And that’s where Challenge Phonics comes in! Keep reading to find out how Challenge Phonics can help your students master digraphs.

What are digraphs and why are they important?

Digraphs can be challenging for younger readers because they represent sounds that don’t match up with the basic phonics rules they have learned. Just when students learn each individual sound, we start changing the rules. Students learn early on what sound the letters “c” and “h” say on their own, but Challenge Phonics teaches students that “ch” says a completely different sound when they are placed together. By using Challenge Phonics, students will learn to recognize those tricky digraphs, making them more confident readers!

Teaching phonics is important because it:

Improves reading fluency. Students can begin tackling more difficult words because they know diagraphs make a new sound together. They don’t have to struggle to sound out each individual letter.

Enhances spelling ability. Knowing advanced phonics skills helps students spell words containing digraphs because they recognize which letter combinations work together to make those sounds and will use the correct digraphs when spelling. 

Makes reading easier and more enjoyable. When our students understand complex phonics rules and patterns, they are more likely to enjoy reading and writing because reading isn’t a struggle for them.

So how do you help your students get all of these benefits? Challenge Phonics to the rescue! This done-for-you phonics resource has everything you need to help your students master digraphs and other important phonics concepts while saving you time.

Challenge Phonics is designed to provide higher-level phonics activities to help you challenge all of the students in your class. Many students will be challenged working on digraphs with one syllable words, but others will need more of a challenge. Challenge Phonics allows all of your students to work on the same skill but at their just-right level!

1. Start With Hands-On Activities!

As teachers, we know that hands-on activities are an important part of the learning process. When teaching phonics, it’s important to use a multisensory approach that engages all of the senses! This is something I incorporate from the beginning as I am introducing a new concept.

Here are a few fun and easy hands-on activities you can use to teach and practice digraphs.

Have students work with letter tiles or magnetic letters to create digraphs and repeat the sound it makes. You can extend this by adding some picture cards and having students say the word, listen for the digraph sound, and then build the proper digraph.
Spray foam shaving cream on students’ desks and have students write the digraph after listening to you say the sound. Then have them repeat the sound.
Allow students to dig through a sensory bin to find hidden letter tiles. Then let them work together to make a digraph. Once they find a match they can say the sound the digraph makes.
Have students string letter beads onto pipe cleaners to make a digraph and repeat the sound it makes as they slide the beads toward each other.

When you allow your students to use their hands and bodies to explore new ideas, their brains make connections quicker and the information is less likely to be forgotten. By starting off with hands-on activities, you are explicitly teaching the concept of digraphs and can now move on to practice!

2. Give students lots of isolated practice with specific digraphs

Like with any skill, repetition, and practice are key to mastering digraphs. Once students have learned that the letters ‘c’ and ‘h’ together say “ch”, give them practice seeing this “ch” digraph in action!

I love using the digraph practice pages from my Challenge Phonics resource! These pages work perfectly for small group instruction, independent practice, or as a center activity.

My students love these pages because they never get bored. There are several activities to complete, on each page which keeps them engaged. I love that each activity gets them thinking and working with the target digraph in a different way.

Activities on each page include:

repeated reading of words
sorting based on beginning/ending digraph sounds
unscrambling words
completing sentences with the correct word

and more! They are also a great activity for building vocabulary, which is an added bonus!

This practice page gives students lots of interaction with how to say the digraph, what it looks like in actual words, as well as how to write it. Once students have practiced this digraph in isolated words, it’s time to help them easily recognize digraphs as quickly as possible.

3. Build automaticity of digraphs

In the beginning, you want students to be able to find digraphs in words when they look for them. But eventually, you want students to know digraphs so well, that it becomes automatic for them. Students no longer have to think about digraphs, they just know them!

Repetition of skills is the best way to build automaticity, so I give my students fun word sorts and word searches for this very reason! Using the word sort in my Challenge Phonics pack, students get to highlight the digraph in each word, cut out the word list, and sort the words based on where the digraph falls in the word. They get really good at identifying whether the digraph sound is at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of the word. Students then glue the words into the proper columns.

I also love using word searches! These puzzles require kids to visually scan through all those letters to find the words that contain the specific digraph we’re studying. Word searches help develop students’ visual recognition skills, which are essential for building automaticity with digraphs.

This continued repetition helps to reinforce learning and makes these digraphs stick in students’ long-term memory. When kids are repeatedly exposed to digraphs, they are more likely to remember the sounds associated with those letter combinations. Using these worksheets as morning work or centers are a great way to make repetition more fun!

Now that students have had several different activities working with the same digraph, it’s time to move on to giving students the opportunity to recognize these digraphs in longer text!

4. Put students’ knowledge to the test

Your students are feeling confident about what they have learned about the digraph they have been working on, but how do you know they really “get it”?

Students who understand digraphs should be able to read words containing those letter combinations with accuracy and fluency. Asking students to read words on flashcards is one way of doing this, but I also want to see that my students can read these words in actual text rather than just in isolation.

One of my favorite pages in my Challenge Phonics resource is the reading comprehension page! Students are challenged to read a paragraph that uses as many words containing the digraph we are focusing on as possible. Students will read this story a total of 3 times to practice those digraph words and help build their fluency.

To be sure students understand what they read in the story, there are 3 reading comprehension questions that students must answer as well. Using these questions to check student comprehension of the text can tell you whether they truly understand the digraphs in context.

Want to give Challenge Phonics a try in your classroom?

I know just how helpful and effective Challenge Phonics has been in my classroom. That’s why I want you to try it out in your classroom! I truly believe that it won’t take you long to see how valuable Challenge Phonics is for your students.

Grab this FREE 4-week pack of Challenge Phonics activities. In this free set, I have included 4 different phonics skills or concepts. That way, no matter what time of year you grab this, there is something you can use right away! This free Challenge Phonics pack includes activities for teaching and practicing digraphs, diphthongs, long vowels, and -or words.

Are you ready to challenge your students?

When it comes to our students, we want to give them every opportunity to grow their reading skills as much as we can throughout the year. If you have students who are ready to move beyond basic phonics, then my Challenge Phonics Digraphs Worksheet resource is just the thing you need! It’s the perfect way for all your students to work on the same skill but at different levels. Challenge Phonics works well with advanced 2nd grade students and 3rd graders.

This resource includes the activities mentioned in this post for the digraphs: ch, sh, th, wh, ph, ck, kn, wr, and qu! Head on over to my TPT Store to grab this pack and get this digraph party started!

And. . . if you are ready to add Challenge Phonics to your classroom all year long, then check out the Challenge Phonics Bundle. This bundle includes everything you need for teaching and practicing digraphs, diphthongs, long vowels, r-controlled vowels, and three letter blends! And. . . all for less than a fast-food meal for your family.

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The post 4 Ways to Use Challenge Phonics to Teach Digraphs appeared first on Elementary Island.

How to Challenge Students That Don’t Need Basic Phonics

Jordana — Mon, 01 Jun 2020 17:57:00 +0000

Do you have students that just fly through phonics practice? What about students who are just bored with the simple and basic one-syllable words that are often associated with learning phonics? Well, it doesn’t have to be this way. As students become better readers we need better phonics words to keep pushing them forward. You ask yourself, “How do you challenge students that don’t need basic phonics?” Challenge Phonics to the rescue!

Teaching phonics is so important to building strong, confident readers. However, sometimes our readers pass up the phonics lessons that are often filled with one syllable words that are ideal for lower reading levels. Other students need more than that in order to continue growing their reading and spelling skills. They need to see the phonics rules in higher level words that better correspond to their reading level. They need their material to be differentiated for them because they don’t need the basic phonics rules. They need a phonics challenge!

What is Challenge Phonics?

For years I’ve watched as many students easily complete phonics activities because they are just easy. This is especially true with 2nd and 3rd grade students who have mastered or are close to mastering phonics, students who are making the transition from learning to read to reading to learn. They have been exposed to phonics rules since kindergarten and they need a challenge to take their learning and mastery to the next level.

Challenge Phonics is meant to be a challenge. It is perfect for those students who are easily flying through the simple words that are often associated with phonics lessons. It is perfect for grade level students that are ready to be pushed just a little. And it is perfect for independent phonics practice while you are working with small groups.

Challenge Phonics is filled with multiple-syllabic words that highlight and target all of the phonics sounds and spelling patterns. Students are challenged to use their knowledge of the phonics sounds to work with more advanced words, words that will challenge them, words that will help them get to the next level of reading, spelling and writing!

The Method

Through the years I’ve noticed some consistent methods that have helped my students learn phonics rules and sounds. Methods that all my students have learned from and remembered. Methods that have led to mastery. I’ve taken those methods and put them into Challenge Phonics so that I know my students are working independently in a similar way to proven teaching methods.

Within each Challenge Phonics set your students will get repeated exposure to the target sound and spelling pattern. It is not enough to teach a phonics sound, give some word examples and then move on. Our students need repetition and repeated exposure. In Challenge Phonics every sound combination comes with four different no-prep printable practice pages. Each page is filled with numerous opportunities for students to work with the target sound.

In addition to repeated exposure, students are provided with a wide variety of activities. This variety allows them opportunities to work with the target sound and spelling pattern in different ways. For each phonics sound, students will be seeing or using the sound in a variety of ways. Your students will use the target phonics sound in:

reading words
within syllables
spelling in multiple activities
word meaning
reading a passage with a focus on the target sound
reading comprehension
writing with the words

Through this variety students get the big picture of words, not just a spelling list.

In this activity pictured above, students are working with words in many different ways. This is a great introductory page to get students started on the new sound.

Next, students work on reading with the target sound. However, reading is taken out of sentence form and put into a full a reading passage. After finding the words with the target sound and reading 3 times, students are challenge with reading comprehension questions to check their understanding.

In another activity students focus word meaning and syllables. Students are really working to put together the full picture of the words and their spelling patterns.

Finally, students can finish with a spelling based puzzle. Who doesn’t love puzzles?!?

Students Doing Phonics

We all love when our students have those a-ha moments. But as I think back I realize that very few of those moments came from me telling my students something. The vast majority of those moments came from students doing. Doing activities that are designed to help them learn and practice a skill or concept. This is when their brains start firing neurons and building connections. Our students must be doing phonics to learn phonics.

In My Classroom . . .

Students in my classroom use Challenge Phonics during their independent center time while I am working with small groups. Our I will work in small groups with my struggling learners to provide them with direct instruction using words that are on their reading level. This allows them opportunities to work with the words without being frustrated. My on level students may start Challenge Phonics with me as we work together to talk about the sound and the word list. However, once they have been introduced to the words through small group teaching they are usually able to complete the activities independently. My above level students will get the phonics instruction as it is introduced whole class, but they are ready to work on all of the Challenge Phonics pages on their own.

Challenge Phonics also makes a super easy way to differentiate for the needs of my students. Sometimes we are all working on the same phonics sound and spelling pattern, but sometimes we are not. Sometimes our target phonics sound is connected to our guided reading selections, which will vary by level. Having Challenge Phonics on hand, I can quickly and easily pull different phonics practice for my different groups.

Give it a Try!

I think you will love Challenge Phonics as much as my students and I do. But don’t take my word for it – try it. This printable FREE 4 weeks free set of Challenge Phonics is a perfect way to try it out for yourself. Or you can try out the digital CH digraph for free as well!

You can find the full set of Challenge Phonics in my Teachers Pay Teachers store. I have sets for long vowels, digraphs and diphthongs. You can even find a bundle with all of them and save. All of the sets are available in DIGITAL FORMAT too!

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The post How to Challenge Students That Don’t Need Basic Phonics appeared first on Elementary Island.

How To Make Your Phonics Practice Fun

Jordana — Wed, 28 Aug 2019 17:09:00 +0000

Phonics…..so much skill and drill. Read and reread. It can be monotonous and boring for many students learning to read. Engagement is critical. That is why I had to share my new idea that has kept my students practicing and wanting to practice more! It involves ONE secret ingredient to help improve and motivate during PHONICS PRACTICE! Read on to find out!

PLAY-DOH!!!! It’s magic!!! Did you know that? Ha! I mean who doesn’t love Play-Doh – the smell, the texture, the colors, and the way it can be manipulated into anything! I created another activity in math, my even and odd houses, that involved Play-Doh and knew I had to create more products with it! My students were having so much fun and didn’t realize they were even learning.

What are Phonics Mats?

That is when I decided to develop my Play-Dough Phonics Mats! Students are intentionally practicing the short vowel word family endings by trying to match the picture with the beginning sound given and the word family listed at the top! It’s amazingly easy repeated practice that students enjoy over and over.

How to Get Started:

These are very easy to set up and implement. Simply print out your sheets you would like to practice and place in a sheet protector for durability. Leave out the colored Play-Doh that correspond with the word families on the paper. Each word family has a specific color for students to mark with.

Students can then use the recording sheet to write down their answers that they placed their Play-Doh on. These recording sheets are perfect for center work. My Play-Dough Mats also come with a colored answer key so students can self-check their work. If you are 1:1, you may have your students take a picture of their completed paper and upload it for grading with the answer key provided!

If you love this idea, but don’t have the Play-Doh colors listed on the worksheet, simply print the black and white version. Students can make the word families the colors of Play-Doh you have provided and work from there! If you don’t have Play-Doh, students can color in the word families any color they want and the answers to match or use mini erasers to mark the answers! Phonics Mats are a great center either way!

Get them HERE in my TpT store to try out today! Do you think Play-Dough Phonics Mats are something your students would enjoy? I hope they do as much as mine do!

The post How To Make Your Phonics Practice Fun appeared first on Elementary Island.

Phonics Focus Lessons

Jordana — Sun, 29 Jul 2018 15:38:00 +0000

I know summer is quickly winding down for some of you, and I can’t believe it! As I get ready for my school year to begin, one of the things I like to prep and plan ahead for is phonics. Does anyone else feel like your students don’t retain the phonics patterns you teach, because you have a MILLION patterns to get through in the year, and you’re moving quickly??

I’ve found that it helps to just get a little more focused with the way that I teach the patterns to begin with! These focused phonics lessons really help my students with their decoding long-term. I have seen a huge different since I started using them!

How the Phonics Focus lessons work:

Step 1: I prep the words on notecards to hang in a pocket chart. The students can see the pattern you are working with right away, and you will use these later on in your lesson!

Step 2: You have your own teacher guide for each pattern in these lessons. Start by reading the words and sentences from your guide. Students write the words down on their Phonics Focus paper. Each word has a set of boxes-white for consonants and gray for vowels. This is an easy little visual trick that helps students notice syllables, and when two vowels make one sound! It’s great for decoding.

Step 3: Have students use the pattern and apply it to some nonsense words that they will be unfamiliar with. This helps to make sure that they are really internalizing what that pattern says, and not just relying on memory with the words that they know!

Step 4: Sort! You can pull those word cards you made back out and discuss different ways to sort with the students. I suggest some different ways on your teacher guide, but you also can open it up to students and see if they can find any patterns among the words.

Step 5: Students think of their own words that are part of the word families in the list. You can have students share and create a chart of new words that use the pattern. You also can create new notecards for these words and sort them with your original list!

Step 6: Sentences. I like to read one sentence aloud for students to write, based on the words from our list, and then give students a sentence with all new words. This way, they must apply the pattern I have taught them to other types of words, which is what they will be doing as they see this pattern in books, or need to use this pattern in their own writing.

All of these steps do not necessarily need to happen in the same day! If you have a small block for phonics, you may need to stretch them out so you are only doing a couple of steps a day. The nice part about these lessons is that everything you need is on a single sheet of paper (with the exception of some note cards!) It’s easy for you and your students to keep up with!

What do YOU do to make phonics a priority in your room? What has worked for you? Share in the comments!

PS: The photos in this blog are highlighting my Phonics Focus pack for Diphthongs! You can view the product HERE. Or, if your students need a bit of a CHALLENGE during your phonics instruction, click the thumbnails below to see my Challenge Phonics lessons in my TPT Store!

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