[marialignos]

#3853

For phonological awareness I have the students put their heads down on the desk. I then ask them to raise a hand only when they hear the sound we are looking for. Example: if we are studying ai long a sound they are to raise their hands when I say rain, train, plain, etc… I will also say the word cake which is a long a sound but follows the magic-e rule instead. Some students raise their hands because they hear the long a sound and some do not because they know how to spell cake. I also make a coloring game. I will put ai words, magic-e words, and other random words in boxes. I then ask them to color all the boxes that follow the ai long a sound.
I also play a game with them for rhyming. I pair the students up. I give them a starting word. They then take turns finding words that rhyme. The winner is the one who said the last rhyming word. They take turns going first.
The kiddos like making nonsense words by blending. I make 3 piles of cards. The first pile has digraphs, the second pile are the vowels, and the last pile contains the consonants. They take turns flipping the cards. Sometimes real words are made and sometimes they make nonsense words. The class needs to give a thumbs up or down to determine what kind of word it is, real or made up. I get a lot of giggles when we play this. I just need to make sure that all words made are school appropriate.