SATPIN Phonics booklet - 40 pages

This booklet will take children through the first 6 sounds of phase 2. They will learn to recognise them, write them, read them, hear the first sound and blend them. Booklet in black and white to take into account printing costs and also to allow the children to colour themselves. There are some fab monsters!
Download: Phonics Booklet

Name the Alien (Phase 5)

This is a big pack of resources for the following activity and is available to purchase for £1 from my ELSA website if you are interested. Name the Alien Resource

Here is how you can use this resource and I must say it worked brilliantly with a child I am working with who tends to guess at words and doesn't apply her phonics to blend. She was very motivated to make as many different names for the alien as possible.

First of all I introduced the Alien and told her he came from the planet /ay/. We repeated the sound and I asked the child to write the sound on a whiteboard so she could remember it. I then told her that she had a challenge to name him. He didn't have a name and she had to make a name for him. I asked her to cut out the cards. Lots of scissor practise to help motor skills needed here. I then asked her to read all the sounds to me to ensure she knew them all. She remembered the /ay/ sound. I told her that we had to have the /ay/ sound in his name because he was from the planet /ay/.
I then showed her the phoneme frame and told her that if she needed to press the sound buttons she could. I told her to rearrange the sounds in the boxes to make the names. She LOVED this and made loads of names, constantly blending over and over again using that /ay/ sound. Everytime she made a new name I asked her to write it on her sheet (see below). This reinforced the /ay/ sound and also segmenting skills. She wanted to make a HUNDRED but unfortunately time was an issue so I stopped her when she had done a reasonable amount. I then asked her to choose her favourite name. Again she blended and read every name that she had written to choose her favourite which was Zzayn.

To extend this activity further the child could describe their alien using adjectives and then write a few sentences about him.

Spin, read and write

I have just made this to use for all the children I tutor. Print onto A3, laminate and pop a spinner into the wheel. You can buy these from Amazon or just use a pencil and a paper clip spinner. Using a whiteboard pen write the focus sounds or words on the spinner. Each child has a different coloured whiteboard pen and they take it in turns to spin the wheel, read the word and then write the word on the grid. The aim of the game is for them to get three words in a row either horizontally, vertically, or diagonally.

You can work on different phases, different sounds, words using a focus sound, cvc words or even tricky words. Children get practice at reading, and writing (insist on correct letter formation).
Download: Spin, read and write

Recognising vowel digraphs in words

Children need to really know the different representations of the vowel digraphs to be able to read them automatically. This is one way to help children do that.

One of the children I work with knows all these sounds but doesn't recognise them in words.

The idea is for the child to really look at the words, read them and highlight them in different colours. This really focuses them into the sounds they are searching for.

Download ay/ai/a-e search

Roll a sound

This is a very simple activity using a die with dotty numbers, a laminated sheet, some counters or a whiteboard pen.

Each number represents a sound and the child rolls the die, finds the sound it represents and either covers it with a counter on the grid or crosses it off with a dry wipe pen.

There is one already made using satpin but I have included a word version using comic sans as the font. I am aware that many will not have sassoon.

Roll a sound

Roll a sound (word) so you can edit to put your own sounds in

Santa faces

Download by clicking the links below:

Santa's face phase 2 and phase 3 mat.

SATPIN assessment

Here are two sheets which can be used for assessment purposes and also the children will love doing them. All they need to do is read the graphemes or words and then they can colour a star. The aim is to colour all the stars. Great for target setting for your children. For example if they cannot read one of the graphemes then they need to practise that grapheme until they can. I will add more of these as I get further on with my phonics intervention.

Download: How many words can you read?
Download: How many graphemes can you read?

Vowel stick

Hearing the vowels in words can often be a problem when spelling words so this little activity focuses on listening carefully for the vowel sounds. Concentrate on the short vowel sounds, so the /a/ in cat, the /e/ in bed, the /i/ in pin, the /o/ in pot and the /u/ in jug. It is a good idea to practice these sounds on a regular basis. I always used the vowel rap from ELS/ALS but using the sounds not the names of letters.

a-e-i-o-u That is how we say them
a-e-i-o-u That is how we play them
We say them soft, we say them loud
Of our vowels we sure are proud
a-e-i-o-u (whisper)
a-e-i-o-u (normal)

That is how we say them!

Use lolly sticks to write the vowels and make sure you give children their own lolly stick. Alter the sequence of the letters on each stick so children cannot copy off each other. Read out a word containing the short vowel sound. Can the child put their finger on the correct vowel?

Some examples of words would be – sat, mat, bat, ban, bad, cat, can, cap, cast, dab, damp, fan, fat, fast, gap, hat, lap, map, mat, peg, beg, leg, lend, mend, men, red, send, tend, ten, pig, pin, bin, nip, din, dip, fig, gig, jig, limp, sip, pod, bod, mod, pond, bond, cot, con, cop, hop, mop, rod, pud, mud, dud, cup, but, bun, lump, fun, sun.

Extension

Use longer words for example compound words where they have to listen for two vowels. For example tenpin, batman, fishshop, flipflop, tiptop, tinman etc

Pick one and read it!

Write a sound at the top of the lolly stick and a word at the bottom. The child picks a sound, names the sound and then blends and reads the word. 

Bag of sounds

This is a pass the parcel type game where the bag is passed around the circle as you all sing ‘Bag of sounds, pass it round, pass it round, pass it round. Bag of sounds, pass it round. What sound is it?’ (Sang to the tune of London Bridge is falling down). Whoever has the bag when the song finishes has to take out a letter and read it.

Roll the letter

Write the sounds which are on the die onto the whiteboard and add 2 or 3 extra sounds which are not on the die. Ask the child to throw the die and match the letter on the die to the letter on the whiteboard. They can cross off each letter one at a time. How quickly can they roll all six letters? How many letters are left? What are the letters that are left?

How many times can you write it?

Most children love a bit of competition and this very simple activity gives competition and lots of practice at writing letters correctly. Set a timer for 1 minute. How many times can the child write the focus grapheme in one minute? The letters must be readable and formed correctly as you will be watching. The person who writes the letter the most times is the winner. This activity also gives children some good counting practice too.

Ask the children to write a word as many times as they can in one minute. This could be extended further by asking them to write a caption or sentence as many times as they can in one minute, making sure they put the capital letter at the beginning and a full stop at the end of their sentence.

Race to the board

This activity gets children up and moving around. You need to decide what your focus sounds are and lay the magnetic letters out on the floor at one side of the classroom. At the other side of the classroom you need magnetic boards. Ideally one magnetic board each but one between two would be fine. The adult shouts out a sound and the child must get the magnetic letter and move quickly and safely across the classroom and stick the letter on their board. This could be a great group activity or even class activity providing safety is taken into consideration. You could do this in the hall to give more room to run around.

 This could be extended by using words instead of just sounds. Read out a word and the child has to collect the correct letters, run across the classroom and spell the word.

You could also show the children a picture and the child has to get the beginning sound and run across the classroom to stick on their board.

Snowball toss

All you need are paper cups, pen and cotton wool balls. The child throws the cotton wool ball at the cup and then reads the grapheme.

Paper plate sounds

A very simple concept using a paper plate. Focus on a few sounds or all the sounds in a particular phase. All you need to do is write the sounds all around the edge of the plate, cut at each side and the child bends over the sound they hear. You could read words and they have to find the beginning sound or just say the sound and they have to find it and bend it over.

You could also ask them to spell a word for you by bending over the appropriate graphemes in the correct order.

Bingo

Play bingo with letters or words either on a whiteboard by drawing a cross. Show the child how to do this or by downloading the bingo boards below and allowing the child to write the words in each box.

Bingo grid

Race the sounds

Use a white board and dry wipe pen along with a die with letters on each side and 'Race the sounds' or use the printed grids below.

Race the sounds 2 grid
Race the sounds 3 grid
Race the sounds 4 grid
Race the sounds 5 grid
Race the sounds 6 grid