For any of you that have taught early phonics to young children, the question may well have come up – ‘Do you teach blending or segmenting first?’ This is a common question, but one there seems no official answer to if you consult the usual authoritative channels. I have based my own personal answer to …
Before children learn to write words, they need to orally segment. Segmenting is simply the skill of separating words up into their component sounds. For example, ‘pig’ becomes ‘p-i-g’. ‘Dog’ becomes ‘d-o-g’. It does not matter how the word is written. You are splitting up the sounds not the letters. So ‘chain’ would be split …
When I very first started teaching I had all sorts of problems with behavior! I remember the first lesson I ever took, and about half of the children lay down on the floor and refused to sit back up again. Dark days! Shortly after this, one of my first discoveries to counter interesting behaviors such …
Many of us often find that we have lots of exciting strategies to teach other skills in phonics, but when it comes to teaching tricky words it’s just a case of getting out the flashcards again, and hope the children remember them. How else can you teach tricky words more excitingly? Using flashcards indeed is …
Struggling to find alliteration activities? You’ve come to the right place; and can I just say that these games are spectacularly superb and seriously special! Alliteration is something that children can begin to understand through repetition of enjoyable activities, many of which can just be thrown into your daily routine. How do you teach alliteration? …
I have to say that if I could select just one resource to take from my classroom, it would undoubtedly be claves, or ‘rhythm sticks’ as we like to call them. Rhythm sticks are simply long pieces of broomstick-like wood, cut into about 8-inch sections and the ends sanded down. You can use claves, but the …