Lately, I have been learning a lot about approaches to use with students with dyslexia. One thing I continue to hear is the importance of phonemic awareness. I've started including more phonemic awareness activities in my whole group instruction, because I believe it can benefit all students.
As I was reading about common strategies that do not help students with dyslexia, and can even be harmful, I realized that I was guilty of using some of these techniques in my classroom. One that I was surprised by was the boxes shaped like letters, which are supposed to help students identify the shapes of words. In theory, this sounds good, but it is actually harmful.
Unfortunately, all of the small group phonics task cards I had purchased for use in my classroom used these types of boxes, which I had thought were effective. Of course, when we know better, we do better, so I could no longer use these task cards with my students. That meant that I had to make some new ones based on my current understanding of phonemic awareness.
I have created some CVC task cards with touch points for each sound in the word. Students identify the picture and say the name, then touch the dots one at a time, saying a sound for each touch.
Next, they write the letter that makes the sound they hear at each touch point.
The cards are self-checking, so the kids can flip them over to check their work, and then circle the thumbs-up or thumbs-down to keep track of how many they got right.
I wanted there to also be an ongoing tracking system to help kids remember which decks they need to practice and to motivate them to continue practicing. My students love earning items in online games, so I thought of a way to put this in paper form by creating scene builders.
Each student has a folder with a tracking sheet. They color in a star for each time they practice all 15 cards for one of the vowels.
After coloring in all three stars for one of the vowels, the kids earn an object to add to their farm scene.
This system is fun for kids and is based on best practices for phonemic awareness. It is easy to implement as an independent center, great for teacher-led small groups, or for kids to use with a partner.
You can get these cards here in my store or here in my TPT shop. I hope they help you create easy, meaningful small group work to develop solid phonemic awareness skills!
Keep teaching with heart and passion!
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