CVC Picture cards

There are some children who just cannot hear the words when they try and blend the sounds together. I have come across this a few times during my years teaching children phonics. To address this it is important to put the word cards away, put the letters away for a little while and concentrate on listening skills. One of the very successful things I used to do was using a set of picture cards and using those to practice the skill of listening to the blend. I had one little boy a few years ago who had managed to reach year 2 and still could not blend. He just didn't quite get what he was supposed to do. He had learnt all his graphemes in phase 2 and knew quite a few in phase 3 but just couldn't blend them together to make a word.

The first thing I did was to choose 2 cards with 2 different objects on. I laid them in front of him and asked him what they were. He could tell me without any problem. I then said I was going to ask for one of them but I was going to sound talk the word for him. If we say the two objects were a cat and a pen. I would then say 'Can you give me the p...e...n? If he didn't quite get it I said the sounds faster until I was nearly (but not quite) saying the word. He soon realised what the word was and passed me the card. I repeated this with another two cards. Eventually he got better at listening and could choose the correct card. I then added another card so he was choosing from 3 cards. We continued our sessions until eventually he has all the cards in front of him and could easily find the right card. Giving the child a big clue by showing the pictures really helped him focus on the sounds. He knew that it was one of two objects and soon realised that one began with a /p/ and the other with a /c/. It got trickier when I chose two cards which began with the same letter but he soon realised what he had to do.

When he could do this really well we then moved onto the grapheme cards and I started him on vc words like 'it, at, in, an, as, is, am,' and really got him to listen to himself saying these sounds. We progressed to cvc words and then to books. He is a very competent reader now. He was a bright boy but just hadn't made the connection between the sounds and the words.

This set of cards is similar to the cards I used with him. I have also included a full page of these pictures for playing bingo type games.

Of course the cards can be used for spelling practise too. Choose a card, say what it is and then spell it. If you laminate them then the child can write directly onto the card with a dry wipe pen.

DOWNLOAD: CVC PICTURE CARDS

DOWNLOAD: Sheet of CVC pictures