Phonics Tic Tac Toe

This week we pulled out an old favorite and revamped it a bit.  Seems like after so many years, you look at something you've made and want to make it look "cleaner" or use different clip art or a cuter font.  In between parent teacher conferences this week, I tackled that project.  There is a set for Short Vowels, Bossy R vowels, Digraphs, and Long Vowel sounds.  These games are sold separately or as a combo pack.  You can look at a preview of these at our TPT store.  Click on the links below...

Short Vowel Tic Tac Toe:  HERE (A, E, I, O, U)

Bossy R Tic Tac Toe:  HERE. (AR, OR, ER, IR, UR, EAR)

Digraphs Tic Tac Toe:  HERE (SH, TH, WH, CH)

Long Vowels Tic Tac Toe:  HERE
(AI, AY, A-E, EE, E-E, EA, -Y, I-E, IGH, -Y, O-E, OA, OO, OO, OW, OW, U-E, EW)

You can purchase these four games as a combo HERE at our TPT store:

Word Decoding Pages

We created these word decoding pages about 5 years ago when one of us had a student teacher (which means extra time to make and create when they were full-time teaching).  We wanted something to help kids prepare for their first standardized reading test in the spring.  These were made to go along with our sequential phonics program that adds one new spelling pattern each week.

On the top half of the page, the student needs to find the word that matches the picture.  This is where they have to be a decoder as well as a "reader", meaning sometimes decoding isn't enough.  They need to know which word "looks right".

The bottom half of the page has a sentence and two pictures to choose from.  Here the focus is on comprehension.  To extend this into a writing activity, I usually have the students write a sentence on the back of the paper that matches the picture they they didn't choose.

These were created in Appleworks, our district transitioned us to Pages, then switched us to use Remote Desktop so we are Windows...so these never got transferred electronically.  So, we just scanned these into a PDF file...hence the grainy edges.

Clip art is all DJ Inkers so this is a FREEBIE we wanted to share with you all.  You can get it through Google Docs HERE.

Hope this is something that you can use.  The kids love coloring the pictures!

Build a Word Work Mats for Letter Tiles

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Here are some workmats that we dug out of the archives.  Funny how you start looking through your files and you find things you forgot you have!!!  This a great activity for the beginning of first grade literacy centers or any time you need a quick "may do" activity during Guided Reading groups.  These were made with DJ Inkers clip art and have places for students to fill in the missing letters with letter tiles or using a wipe off marker.  This set includes 12 work mats with these themes:  farming, farm animals, zoo animals, baseball, cats, dogs. 

 You can get this free through Google Docs HERE.

Long Vowel Spelling Swat Mats

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This is a great activity to do in small literacy groups.  Students listen to a word that you say aloud and decide which long vowel spelling pattern makes that sound.  They can either swat it with fly swatters (play like Slap Jack) or place a chip on it (if they have their own mats).  You could even make class set of these and do large group. There are 5 mats included and the sounds that are mostly covered in first grade are included:

Long a:  a, ay, a-e
Long e:  e, e-e, ee, -y (like candy)
Long i:  i, i-e, y-e, igh, -y (like fly)
Long o:  o, o-e, ow, oa
Long u:  u, u-e, oo, ew

You can download these swat mats made with DJ Inkers (www.djinkers.com) clip art for FREE using Google Docs HERE.

Short Vowel Circle Games

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We finally got the short vowel (CVC words) circle games merged together in one file so if you are interested in purchasing those games as a complete set of 5 games you can find them at our TPT store HERE. 

If you don't know what a "circle game" is, you might have heard it called an "I Have...Who Has?" game.  Each student gets a card or cards and has to listen for, then read aloud the word in green.  They then have to decode the word in read to ask who has that word.  The game goes ina complete circle until all cards are used.

We created these for each week that we introduce a new sound.  We made the entire set of games so that each week, the games only include sounds that we have covered in our sequential phonics program that we put together using The Language Tool Kit and one of our favorite instructor teachers, Cathy Angel, who taught classes called Making Reading Heavenly and Tools For Reading and Spelling Success.  Our whole phonics program is based on these two ideas.

Here is an overview of what the games looks like:

Sight Word Circle Games

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A few years back we created some class "I have __.  Who has __?" circle games for the Dolch PP, Primer, and 1st grade words.  The words that the student has to LISTEN for and READ are in green and the word they have to SOUND OUT and ask for is in red.  Once students get a bit more independent at reading these words, we use them in small group literacy centers.

See pictures below for what the games look like.  You can get these games from our TPT store for FREE by clicking on the links below.

Pre-Primer Sight Wordds Circle game, click HERE.

Primer Sight Words Circle Game, click HERE.

1st Grade Sight Words Circle Game, click HERE.

Thanks for stopping in!  Hope you could find something you could use in your classroom.