Shortly after students learn the letters and sounds of the alphabet we teach them that the vowels and several consonants actually have two sounds. The consonants “c” and “g” are two of the letters that make different sounds depending on the letters that follow them in the word. The most common sound for the “g” is the “hard” sound as in the word “goat”.  However, if the “g” is followed by an i, e or y it makes the “soft” /j/ sound as in the word “giraffe”.  Word sorting activities are very helpful when introducing a new phonics concept. Using sorting activities, students are able to tell when a certain rule either does and does not apply.  I created these

Oh so many phonics rules to remember! From remembering that vowels have two sounds to the more advanced rules- WOW! It’s quite a bit for our little readers and writers. As we teach the rules, it’s always helpful to incorporate visuals and stories. It gives our students something to anchor to when coming across a word in text or when trying to correctly spell the word when writing. Teaching the “Defender D” rule is super fun! After students understand the magic e rule (the “e” at the end of a one syllable word makes the vowel long), we introduce an exception to that rule. When a word ends in “dge”, the “d” stops the “e” from making the vowel say

There are so many phonics rules! It’s really amazing that most of our little ones are able to break the code and become fluent readers. After students learn the letters and sounds of the alphabet, we kind of rock their world a bit by teaching them that certain letters can have different sounds depending on where they are in the word or by the letters that surround them. The letter “y” is one of those tricky letters. The “y” can be a consonant or a vowel. The consonant sound of “y” is /y/ as in the word “yellow”. Typically at the beginning of the word the “y” makes the consonant /y/ sound. The “y” also has two vowel sounds. Typically,