Light Up Your Phonics Instruction

Hi Friends,

It’s Hope King from Second Grade Shenanigans and I am so excited about one of the newest strategies that I have implemented into my classroom to help my sweet little struggling spellers/decoders. Lately, my little phonics group that is still hard at working mastering the “sound it out” technique has really been uninterested bored out of their minds  straight up struggling!  I have tried everything…AND I MEAN EVERYTHING to get their attention, catch their eye and really get them focused on the importance of spelling and the knowledge of how words work. I must say…if you can’t pay attention to the CRAZY lady practically standing on her head…I don’t know what will work. I will have to say I was beginning to become a tad frustrated {not with them of course…with the “situation”}…yes we have ALL been there! So, I decided to try yet another little method to get them going. I bought some very inexpensive lights at Walmart to help them visually see how many sounds are in the words that we have been trying to spell. I was a hopin’ and a prayin’ that this would literally give them a light bulb moment.

I decided to use the lights {I refer to them as tap lights} during small group phonics instruction for my struggling readers and spellers. {A little note: these lights are now used with all of my groups…the kids are dying to get their hands on them}. Here is how the lights are working in our room.

As we sound out each word, the students tap a light for each sound.

Here we were working on the word scuff.

Once the students know how many sounds are in the word, they build the word using magnetic tiles.  Scuff has three sounds /sc/ /u/ /ff/ so the students turned on three lights. Then they pulled down the letters that represented each sound.

                                                                                                                                                  

Now…here is the BEST part! When the student creates the word, I tap out the lights of the sounds that are correct. For example, in the word scuff, the student had the middle and ending sound correct, so I turned those lights off. They now know that something is wrong with their beginning sound. Rather than saying, no…you got the word wrong, they can correct a specific part.  {Ahhh…just thinking about how well these little lights have been working just makes this girl giddy!}

When all parts of the word are correct, the lights are all turned off and the student knows they are right on track! {I totally forgot the next picture had the word track until I looked down at the picture!}

I have had more success in the past three days of phonics instruction than I have had all year. My students are seriously on fire during phonics time and are beginning to manipulate letter sounds and create new words. Phonics Tap Light + My Students = A Match Made in Heaven. My other groups have been using the lights to segment words into syllables. They tap a light for each syllable in their word to learn how to break words apart.

If these lights are going to motivate my students with phonics {seriously…it was bad y’all} I may need my parents to provide a year supply of batteries to incorporate these little gems into all subject areas! J

How do you get your students enthused about phonics??? I am dying to know...just in case all of my lights burn out!