5 Center Activities for Practicing Phonological Awareness

Summary

In this video, Alison, a literacy specialist from The Primary Pond, shares fun and effective phonological awareness activities for K-2 students. These activities help kids practice essential skills like rhyming, syllable segmentation, and sound identification through games such as rhyming clip cards, syllable puzzles, memory matching, and Kaboom. The activities can be done independently or with partners, and Alison emphasizes their adaptability to different phonological skills. She also offers a comprehensive resource pack on Teachers Pay Teachers for educators looking for ready-made phonological awareness centers.

Takeaways

• 😀 Alison is a literacy specialist at The Primary Pond, sharing fun and effective phonological awareness activities.
• 📚 Phonological awareness focuses on sounds in words, not letters. It includes skills like rhyming, clapping syllables, identifying first and last sounds, blending, and segmenting sounds.
• ⏲️ For kindergarten and first grade, 10-15 minutes daily should be dedicated to phonological awareness activities in whole group, small group, and individual practice.
• 🖼️ Activity 1: Rhyming clip cards—students identify rhyming words by clipping or placing counters on the correct match, such as 'shoe' and 'glue'.
• 🥞 Activity 2: Syllable segmenting with puzzle pieces—students break words into syllables (e.g., 'pancakes') and blend them back together.
• 🃏 Activity 3: Memory game—students match cards with the same initial sounds by saying words aloud (e.g., 'cat' and 'car').
• 🎉 Activity 4: Kaboom—a game where students identify sounds in words and risk losing cards when they draw a 'Kaboom' card, adding excitement.
• 🍿 Activity 5: Popcorn sorting for long vowels—students match words based on vowel sounds, such as 'train' (long A) and 'cake'.
• 📝 These activities are adaptable for different phonological awareness skills, including rhyming, syllables, and sounds.
• 🔗 Alison offers a Phonological Awareness Center bundle with over 120 activities for K-2 teachers, available on Teachers Pay Teachers.

Q & A

What is the main topic of Alison's video?

The main topic of Alison's video is phonological awareness activities that are effective and fun for children to do independently or in centers.

What is phonological awareness according to Alison?

Phonological awareness refers to the sounds in words and involves skills like rhyming, clapping syllables, identifying first and last sounds in words, blending sounds, and segmenting them.

What is the difference between phonological awareness and phonics as explained by Alison?

Phonological awareness involves working with spoken words and pictures without letters, while phonics involves letters and the relationship between letters and sounds.

How much time should be spent on phonological awareness activities in a K-1 classroom?

Alison suggests spending 10 to 15 minutes a day on phonological awareness activities in kindergarten and first grade classrooms.

What is the purpose of the rhyming clip cards activity?

The rhyming clip cards activity helps children practice identifying words that rhyme by matching pictures of words that share the same ending sound.

How do two and three syllable segmenting eggs help with phonological awareness?

Two and three syllable segmenting eggs help children practice syllable blending and segmenting by breaking words into syllables and then recombining them.

What is the memory game activity used for in Alison's video?

The memory game activity is used for matching initial sounds. Children match pictures based on the first sound of the words they represent.

What is the 'Kaboom' game and how does it relate to phonological awareness?

The 'Kaboom' game is a variation where children pick picture cards and say the initial sound. If they pull a 'Kaboom' card, they must return all collected cards, making the game ongoing and practicing initial sounds.

How does the popcorn say and sort activity help with long vowel sounds?

The popcorn say and sort activity helps children practice identifying and matching long vowel sounds by sorting pictures based on the vowel sound they contain.

Where can the complete set of phonological awareness center activities be found?

The complete set of phonological awareness center activities can be found in Alison's Teachers Pay Teachers store.

What is the benefit of having the activities organized by skill in Alison's Teachers Pay Teachers pack?

Having the activities organized by skill allows teachers to differentiate instruction and provide targeted practice for specific phonological awareness skills that students need to work on.

Outlines

00:00

📚 Introduction and Purpose of the Video

Alison introduces herself as a literacy specialist and explains that the video will cover fun and effective phonological awareness activities. These activities can be done by children independently, especially for centers or individual work. She emphasizes the importance of subscribing to her channel to stay updated with new content about teaching literacy for K-2.

05:02

🗣️ Understanding Phonological Awareness

Alison explains phonological awareness, which focuses on recognizing and manipulating sounds in words without the use of letters (e.g., rhyming, clapping syllables, identifying sounds). She highlights the difference between phonological awareness and phonics, where phonics involves letters. Various skills are mentioned, such as identifying the first and last sounds, blending, and segmenting sounds.

⏳ Time Spent on Phonological Awareness

Alison asks viewers about the time they spend on phonological awareness in their classrooms, especially for K-1 students. She recommends allocating 10-15 minutes daily to phonological awareness in whole groups, small groups, and independent practice. For second graders and struggling readers, the practice time may vary depending on individual needs.

🎲 Rhyming Clip Cards Activity

The first activity Alison describes is 'rhyming clip cards.' Children look at a big picture (like a shoe) and then match it with one of three smaller pictures (like glue). They use a clothespin or counter to mark the rhyme. Alison mentions how the activity can be adapted for other phonological skills like identifying initial or ending sounds.

🥞 Syllable Segmenting with Pancakes and Lemonade

Alison introduces a syllable segmenting activity using puzzles, where children blend and segment words like 'pancakes' and 'lemonade.' The goal is for kids to break the word into syllables and then put them together. She also suggests sorting activities where students classify words based on the number of syllables (e.g., two-syllable and three-syllable words).

🧠 Memory Game for Initial Sounds

Alison presents a memory game where children match initial sounds. They turn over cards, say the names of the images, and identify whether they share the same beginning sound. She explains how this activity can be adapted for middle or ending sounds, as well as for counting syllables.

💥 Kaboom! Game for Phonological Practice

In the 'Kaboom!' game, children pull cards with pictures and identify the initial sound of the word (e.g., 'thermometer' for 'th'). If they pull a 'Kaboom' card, they lose their collected cards, making the game exciting and continuous. This game can be used to reinforce a variety of phonological skills.

🍿 Popcorn Say and Sort for Long Vowel Sounds

The last activity is 'Popcorn Say and Sort,' where children match pictures (e.g., 'train' with 'cake') based on long vowel sounds. Alison uses a popcorn theme to make the activity engaging and notes that children can work alone or with a partner for corrective feedback.

🛒 Phonological Awareness Center's Bundle and Differentiation

Alison explains that all the activities demonstrated come from her Phonological Awareness Center's bundle available on Teachers Pay Teachers. She emphasizes that the bundle contains over 120 activities organized by skill, making it easy for teachers to differentiate based on students' needs in small group or independent settings.

👍 Final Thoughts and Call to Action

Alison concludes by encouraging viewers to check out her phonological awareness pack, reminding them to subscribe, like the video, and ask any questions. She expresses hope that the ideas were helpful and looks forward to sharing more in future videos.

Keywords

💡Phonological Awareness

Phonological awareness is the ability to recognize and manipulate the sounds within spoken words, such as rhyming, syllable counting, and identifying initial and ending sounds. This concept is central to the video as it discusses various activities aimed at enhancing children's phonological awareness skills. In the script, Alison explains that phonological awareness involves working with the sounds of words without focusing on letters, making it a precursor to reading.

💡Rhyming

Rhyming is a phonological awareness skill that involves identifying words that have the same ending sound. In the video, Alison introduces a 'Rhyming Clip Cards' activity, where children are asked to match pictures based on their rhyming sounds (e.g., 'shoe' and 'glue'). This helps students recognize and produce rhymes, which is a fundamental skill in early literacy development.

💡Syllable Blending and Segmenting

Syllable blending and segmenting refer to the ability to split words into their syllable parts (segmenting) and combine them to form words (blending). Alison describes an activity using picture puzzles, such as separating the word 'lemonade' into 'le', 'mon', and 'ade' and then blending it back together. These skills are essential for decoding and encoding words, making them a core component of phonological awareness instruction.

💡Independent Practice

Independent practice refers to activities that children can complete on their own without direct teacher assistance. In the video, Alison emphasizes that these phonological awareness activities are designed for independent centers, allowing children to reinforce their skills in a self-directed manner. Examples include the 'Memory' and 'Kaboom' games, where students engage in learning tasks independently or with minimal support.

💡Teachers Pay Teachers

Teachers Pay Teachers is an online marketplace where educators can buy and sell teaching resources. Alison mentions that her 'Phonological Awareness Center's bundle' is available on Teachers Pay Teachers, offering pre-made resources for teaching various phonological skills. This reference is relevant because it provides teachers with ready-made, adaptable activities that can save planning time.

💡Initial Sounds

Initial sounds are the first sounds heard in words. Recognizing and matching initial sounds is a foundational phonological awareness skill. Alison explains an activity where children play a memory game by flipping cards and matching pictures that start with the same initial sound (e.g., 'cat' and 'car'). This helps develop their ability to distinguish and articulate beginning sounds in spoken words.

💡Differentiation

Differentiation refers to tailoring instruction to meet the diverse needs of students. Alison mentions how her phonological awareness activities are organized by skill, making it easy for teachers to differentiate based on students’ individual needs. This allows educators to select resources for small group or independent practice, ensuring that each child receives targeted instruction according to their current abilities.

💡Blending

Blending is the ability to combine individual sounds or syllables to form a whole word. In the script, Alison demonstrates blending during a syllable segmenting activity by separating and combining syllables to form words like 'pancakes'. This skill is critical for early reading, as children need to blend phonemes to decode words when learning to read.

💡Segmenting

Segmenting is the skill of breaking down words into their individual sounds or syllables. Alison uses segmenting in her example with syllable puzzles, where students separate the word 'lemonade' into 'le', 'mon', and 'ade'. This ability to deconstruct words is crucial for spelling and understanding the sound structure of language.

💡Kaboom Game

The 'Kaboom' game is an engaging phonological awareness activity where children draw picture cards to practice a specific skill, like identifying initial sounds. If a child pulls a 'Kaboom' card, they lose their collected cards and must start over. Alison highlights this game's fun and unpredictable nature, which keeps students motivated while practicing phonological skills repetitively in a group setting.

Highlights

Introduction to phonological awareness activities that kids can do independently, such as for centers or independent work.

Explanation of phonological awareness, which includes skills like rhyming, syllable clapping, and sound identification, without involving letters.

Alison emphasizes the importance of dedicating 10-15 minutes per day to phonological awareness practice, particularly in kindergarten and first grade.

Activity 1: Rhyming clip cards, where kids match rhyming words using pictures and clothespins or counters.

Activity 2: Two- and three-syllable segmenting eggs, where kids blend and segment syllables using puzzle pieces representing words like 'pancakes' and 'lemonade.'

Activity 3: Memory game for initial sound matching, where kids flip cards and match pictures with the same beginning sounds.

Memory game variation: Instead of just matching initial sounds, it can be adapted to focus on middle or ending sounds or syllable counting.

Activity 4: Kaboom game, where kids draw cards and practice initial digraph sounds, with the risk of drawing a 'Kaboom' card and losing their collected cards.

Kaboom adds excitement and keeps the game going indefinitely, with kids continually practicing sounds while anticipating the Kaboom card.

Activity 5: Popcorn Say and Sort, where kids sort picture cards by long vowel sounds (e.g., matching 'train' with 'cake' for long 'A' sound).

Emphasis on using partners in games like Popcorn Say and Sort for corrective feedback, helping students learn together.

These activities are adaptable to different phonological awareness skills, making them flexible for diverse classroom needs.

Alison highlights that her Phonological Awareness Centers bundle includes over 120 activities, organized by skill to help with differentiation.

The resource bundle is tailored for K-2, with easy-to-use materials that can be printed for small groups or independent centers.

Final call to action: Alison encourages viewers to check out the Phonological Awareness Centers bundle on Teachers Pay Teachers for ready-made resources.

Transcripts

Alison: Hey, I'm Alison from Learning  

At The Primary Pond. I'm a literacy specialist  and in this video, I'm going to share with you  

some effective, but also super fun phonological  awareness activities and these are things that  

the kids can actually do on their own, like for  centers or independent work. Before we dive in,  

make sure that you're subscribed to my channel  and make sure that you've hit the little bell so  

that you're notified every time I post a brand  new video about teaching literacy in K2.  

Alison: So these, as I said, are going to  

be phonological awareness activities, phonological  awareness as you may already know, refers to the  

sounds in words. So when we're practicing  phonological awareness with kids we're using  

words spoken aloud, we may be using pictures as  you're going to see in some of these activities,  

but there's actually no letters involved. When  we put letters in there that becomes phonic. So  

phonological awareness would include skills like  rhyming, being able to clap at the syllables in a  

word, being able to identify the first sound  in a word last sound in a word, being able  

to blend sounds together segment all of those  skills. And there's more than that, those are  

just some examples. So that is what we are going  to be practicing in all of these activities.  

Alison: Quick question for you to answer in  

the comments. How long are you able to spend each  day on phonological awareness in your classroom?  

Now, ideally, especially in kindergarten and first  grade, phonological awareness should be worked  

on in a whole group setting, in a small group  setting and then even practiced individually or  

practiced independently rather, which is exactly  what these activities are going to help with.  

Now, in second grade and up, especially with  struggling readers, the amount of phonological  

awareness practice that your kids will need will  really vary. But K-1 definitely want to spend like  

10 to 15 minutes a day. Alison:  

Okay. So let's go ahead and get into these  activities, there for different skills and  

all of these resources come from my Phonological  Awareness Center's bundle that I have on Teachers  

Pay Teachers, but the ideas are really flexible  and you can create your own or kind of adapt them  

if you don't have these centers. Alison:  

All right. So activity number one is rhyming clip  cards. Now these are pretty simple. Hopefully you  

can see this, I'll hold it up to the camera.  You're going to have like a big picture,  

like shoe, and then you've got three smaller  pictures and the kids are supposed to say  

the name of the big picture out loud,  shoe, and then they say crab, glue,  

frog. So they're ideally supposed to name all  of the pictures out loud, and sometimes they can  

help if they work with a partner. But so then what  they would do is they would take a little clothes  

pin and they would clip the glue because shoe and  glue rhyme. Okay. So very simple. They could also  

just place a counter on it, if you don't have  clothes pins or don't want them to use clothes  

pins. You can adapt this game to work with many  skills could be first sound, ending sound. That  

Phonological Awareness Center's bundle that I have  actually uses clip cards with multiple skills.  

Alison: All right. Next up,  

we have two and three syllable segmenting eggs. So  it's kind of hard to see if you're not looking at  

it on the table, but you can see here that we have  a stack of pancakes. And so kids would use this to  

practice saying the syllables and then putting  them back together. So blending and segmenting  

syllables. So for pancakes, they would say pan  and they would slide on the table cakes, or rather  

pan cakes.,I might have done that  backwards and they'd say pancakes.  

Alison: Then we have,  

this will probably be too hard to hold up, but we  have like lemonade. So they would say, le, mon,  

ade and they'd be putting them together, lemonade.  So they segment the word and then they put the  

syllables back together. Alison:  

So syllable blending and segmenting, they're  basically just little puzzles. You would give  

them the pieces mixed up and then they're putting  them together and working on their syllables. You  

would also even have them do kind of a sort where  like lemonade have three syllables and pancakes  

at two syllables, and so you'd have more of them  and the kids could put the eggs with two syllables  

here and the eggs with three syllables over there.  So, that is great for practicing syllables.  

Alison: Now let's move on to a  

really simple game memory and you can play this  with so many different skills, but the set that  

I have here is for matching initial sounds. So  kids would just play like they would play memory,  

cards go on the table. If you're ever printing  things off, by the way, and you feel like the kids  

can see through the other side, just take a crayon  or a colored pencil and have them kind of shade  

or you can do it yourself. But the kids are having  the cards set out in rows on the table and then  

they turn over two cards. They must say the names  of the pictures, that's important. So they say  

in this example, cat, car. And if they start with  the same sound, ca, which they should also say,  

then they get to keep the match. If they pull  something like fan and cat, they still have to  

say them out loud. Ideally they would say  the first sound, fa and ca, and then they  

would put them back. So just a normal memory  game, but they are matching initial sounds.  

Alison: Again, this is really flexible just like the other  

games. So you could make it be middle sounds or  ending sounds or number of syllables, maybe they  

clap the syllables and they match the number of  syllables. So with memory, it's simple, but kids  

enjoy it and the possibilities are endless. Alison:  

Okay. Another fun game is Kaboom. This [inaudible  00:05:21] time says different names and you can  

again play it with many different skills, but  what you need for this is you need picture cards.  

Sometimes I'll just like actually fold the cards  in half and I'll put them into some sort of jar,  

container or bag that the kids can't see into.  So they would play in a small group and the  

first player would pick a card and if it's a  picture card, they say the name of the picture,  

like this is thermometer. And then in this version  of the game, the kids are actually working on  

initial diagram sounds so they would say  thermometer, th, and then they keep the card.  

Alison: So then another student takes their turn  

and they might pull whistle, wh, and they keep  that. But then if somebody pulls a Kaboom card,  

then that person has to put all of the picture  cards that they've collected back into the bag,  

the box, wherever you have them pulling it from.  So this means that the game actually never ends  

until time is up because the kids will inevitably  always pull a Kaboom card because there are the  

Kaboom cards in there. And so they're continuing  to practice and it's just a lot of fun because  

they're nervous with anticipation about pulling a  Kaboom card and you can also have them see like,  

oh, what's the greatest number of picture cards I  can collect before I pull a Kaboom card and have  

to put everything back. Alison:  

All right. Our last activity that I'm going  to show you, again, this is very adaptable,  

you can do it with different skills, but this  one is popcorn say and sort for long vowels.  

Now, I actually have these for all of the long  vowel sounds in that Phonological Awareness  

Center's pack that I have on Teachers Pay  Teachers, but I just pulled two to show you.  

So here we have sheep, has the same long vowel  sound as sheep. And here we have, it has the same  

long vowel sound as cake, so A and E. You could  do all of the long vowels if you wanted to or you  

could just focus on like two or three at a time.  But the kids have these little popcorn kernel  

pictures because this is a popcorn tub. So if  it's train, so they pick up the car they say train  

and then they say A, because they're listening  for the vowel sound, and then they put it on  

this one because train has the same long vow  sound as the word cake. But then if they pick up  

this picture that says, eat, eat has the same vow  sound as sheep so they match it here. So they're  

like just putting popcorn on their little  tub mats until all of the cards are gone.  

Alison: This is something where  

the kids can do it on their own, for sure, but  it's also nice to have them work with a partner  

because the partner can provide corrective  feedback. Maybe they don't know what the  

picture should be or they're not sure what the  vowel sound is, then a partner can help.  

Alison: So all of these activities are super engaging,  

adaptable to any skill. And if you want all of  these materials done for you and many, many more,  

I actually have over 120 different center  activities for practicing phonological awareness  

skills in that Teachers Pay Teachers pack that  I was telling you about. So everything you see  

here and so much more. The nice thing about this  pack is that I have it organized where it's by  

skill. So it's like syllable segmenting, rhyming,  matching long vowel sounds, glued sounds, diff  

sounds, so it gets a little bit more challenging.  It's really appropriate for kindergarten through  

second grade. But the nice thing is that you can  use that table of contents to pick like, oh, well,  

these kids are working on this skill but these  kids are working on that skill and then you just  

print the pages or the resources that you need.  And whether it's in small group or things that  

the kids are doing independently, because these  all work really well as independent centers,  

then you can give the kids practice in exactly the  skills that they need to work on. So it's super  

easy to differentiate that way. Alison:  

All right. So I will leave the link for that  Phonological Awareness Center's pack for K-2.  

Again, that's in my Teachers Pay Teachers store.  I'll leave the link for that with this video. And  

of course, let me know if you have any questions.  Thanks so much for watching. I hope these ideas  

were helpful. Don't forget to hit the like button,  subscribe and I will see you in the next video.