Let me start by saying Phonics is a hard, hard thing and inevitably there will be some disagreement about the sounds; explainations of sounds; actions for sounds; etc.  However, this is the culmination of my thievery of the materials, ideas, and teaching methods of some of Shiga's best Elementary School teachers. (Thank you so much Donata, Emma, Brian, LaShonda and Cadmus)

Attached are three documents. 

1) A-4 size lined alphabet cards with both lower and upper case letters (26 cards in all).  The lower case is above the upper case simply because that is unusual and thus (I felt) good for the kids to understand that the letters are the letters regardless of their placement.

2) A-4 size phonics sounds and pictures of objects employing that sound (26 in all).

***These two sets should be printed and placed back-to-back (I put a peice of construction paper in between, but printing the cards on thicker paper would yeild the same result I think) and then laminated.***

3) The explainations for the phonetic sounds, plus an action that can be done to associate the sound in a tangible manner.

I have been introducing the sounds in the order of Brian Neau's writing practice sheets, not the order Emma has laid out the phonics actions, but left the actions explainations in her original order as there is research showing that method is highly effective (Please contact either Emma or Cadmus for more information).  The sounds are the ones Donata has been teaching her students with remarkable sucsess.  When I introduce a new phonetic sound, I ensure the students know the letter's name, then explain the sound using pictures and actions. [For example, I draw a lit candle on the blackboard, then "blow it out" for P.  I then have all the students pretend to hold up a candle and blow it out.]  Next (for consonants) I use LaShonda's "What's your ~~ name?" technique.  [Replace the first letter of your/ the teacher's/ the students' name with the letter being taught.  For example, since my name is Kat, my "P name" is Pat.  **If a student's name begins with a vowel, just add the sound to the front.  (Thus, Asato becomes "Pasato").**] Finally, I hand out the writing practice from Brian's set and reveiw "stroke order" then have the students complete the writing on their own.  The last task with the wrting print is group reading, where we sound out the words as a class.  Since Brian's prints only use words with letters, and thus sounds, the students already know, even younger students can read the words in a group setting.

The first print in Brian's set is four letters and is too much for a single class in my experience.  I have the students learn the sounds for 'a' one lesson, then 'e'; 'n' and 't' the next, durring which they also write the first print.  Reading the words from that print is left to the third class as to not overwhelm them at the start.  Older students would probably be fine to do the full print in one class.  After that print, I do one print roughly every other class, and the complete task takes about 15 minutes.

Good Luck!!!

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alphabet and phonics sounds A4 flash cards.doc Preview & PrintDownload	alphabet and phonics sounds.. sounds and pictures.doc Preview & PrintDownload
The Actions for Phonics Donata's sounds version.doc Preview & PrintDownload

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