As a teacher of reading, we come to discover that there are some habits that separate skilled readers from those that struggle.

• Rely on context clues and guessing
• Skip difficult sections of text
• Read slowly and with great difficulty
• Focus on decoding and not comprehension
• Lack self-monitoring

Confident Readers Tend To:

• Process words automatically and rapidly
• Look for known chunks in an unfamiliar text
• Use context to confirm pronunciation and meaning

Because the expectations for young students learning to read have increased tremendously year after year, it becomes overwhelming for many of our students to keep up with the fast pace of introducing new sound/spellings week after week.  Because we must cover so many different phonics patterns, we can lose those little strugglers to confusion and over-saturation of new material.

I noticed that when my strugglers were not able to recall learned sounds from previous weeks, I was having to dig out our previous word work activities or recreate them quickly with a little whiteboard to support that reader.  I wanted to have something I could easily point to and remind/review as needed.

Phonics Instruction provided in a meaningful context provides multiple anchors

to help students learn about words: meaning, spelling, and sound.

Students gain an understanding of digraphs, trigraphs, beginning, medial, and ending sounds!

Anything can be used for sound boxes!  Changing it up provides novelty which makes for eager little learners!  #milklids  #erasers  #googlyeyes  #poms  #seasonalitems

Focus on one particular group of sounds or build a guided reading anchor wall.

In order to keep the pages from getting worn, I decided to place them in sheet protectors.  Plastic folders or little binders are the perfect places for creating a little review reading book.

Click the picture to see these on teacherspayteachers.

The inspiration for phonics posters came from our flipping for phonics book sets.  My students LOVE to read these all.the.time.  I use them for a warm up during guided reading.  Students also put them in their book boxes and read them to anyone that is willing to listen.

I also just uploaded these short vowel tracers!  Now my students can work on handwriting while I target their phonics pattern!    My reason for creating these is for RTI practice as well as for a fast finisher activity.  My groups begged me to put them in the writing center, but I decided to use them as a reward for finishing work.

I also completed the blends and digraph set of posters!