Phonemic Awareness - Phoneme Discrimination

After being a kindergarten teacher, you come to realize the importance of Phonemic Awareness in a child's education. What is Phonemic Awareness? Phonemic Awareness is not phonics. Phonemic Awareness is the ability to listen for, identify, and manipulate the individual phonemes in words.

Children need to be able to identify the sounds in words that are spoken not words that they see on a page. For example, if I were to ask a child what the initial sound in the word cat is, they would be able to tell me that it is /c/. They need to be able to do this with initial, medial, and final sounds. Once they have mastered this skill, they would move on to manipulating the sounds in words. For example, I would say the word is cat, change /c/ to /b/, what is the new word? Again they need to be able to do this with initial, medial, and final sounds. 

This first Phonemic Awareness pack that I have created has an activity that can be used everyday to help students master this first skill of Phonemic Awareness which is Phoneme Discrimination. There are word lists provided for initial, medial, and final sounds in words. Every day you choose a new sound to focus on. You tell the students that they will be listening for a specific sound as you read off a list of words. When they hear the specific sound they will give some type of signal such as touching their head to let you know that they heard it. This activity can be done in a whole group or small group setting and can be done very quickly. It is great for the beginning of the year and is very beneficial to helping students with their phonemic awareness instruction. See the word lists below. I printed the lists out on different colored paper for initial, short vowel medial, long vowel medial, and final sounds. Then I punched holes in the lists and added a ring to make them easy to use.

I also included worksheets in this pack for students to practice the skill independently. See an example of one of the worksheets below. There are assessment pages that you can use with students as well for a pre-assessment, post assessment, and reassess if they were struggling after first instruction.

There are also a few pictures cards in the pack to provide additional support to students who initially may struggle with the concept. You could use the picture cards as seen below to have students find the two pictures that have the same initial sound or they could try to find the one that does not have the same initial sound.

These are some of the picture cards included.

Children need to master these phonemic awareness skills before they can become successful readers! :)

Back to School Sale

Teachers Pay Teachers is having another back to school sale for one day only! Be sure to check it out tomorrow. My store is also on sale for an additional 20%! Happy Shopping! :)

Back to School Sentence Builder Worksheets

I just posted some Back to School Sentence Builder Worksheets. They are FREE for a limited time! :)  This pack contains 12 sentence builder worksheets with sight words and a Back to School theme. These worksheets help students form a sentence and teach them to always put a capital letter at the beginning and a period at the end. These worksheets encourage students to start reading simple sight word sentences and give them the confidence that they will learn how to read! :) Don't forget to leave feedback and like my store for more flash freebies!

Back to School Freebie

I am feeling a little strange today as many of my friends and former coworkers are back to school today and I am NOT! Starting my first school year as a stay at home mom and not a teacher...crazy! I am definitely missing some of that back to school excitement today where everything is new and you have those dreams and ideas of all the stuff that you are going to do differently this year! :) Wishing everyone a wonderful first day of school! Here is a little Back to School freebie.....a gift tag that you could attach to a new teacher gift, fellow teacher gift, or new student gift!

New job......Mommy!

Lots of changes this summer as I start a new role of......stay-at-home mom. I have had many job changes over the last few years from public school kindergarten teacher to private school business owner and lastly to public school literacy specialist. It has been work, work, work and now I am looking forward to taking the time to just be a mom and a wife!

A few weeks ago we welcomed a baby girl into our family. My son was so excited to become a big brother. While getting ready to leave for the hospital the night before she was born, he was running up and down the halls saying that "this was the best night ever".

With this new little girl and big brother off to 1st grade in the fall, I am looking forward to learning how to be a stay-at-home mom and working on my other passion - creating things for Teachers Pay Teachers and sharing the journey on this blog! :)

February Worksheets

February is here already! I can hardly believe it! All of the kids are making so much progress but I will have to admit that it is our transitional kindergarteners that are impressing me the most. They have all started to blend words, write simple sentences, and are doing the same math as the kinders! So amazing….I am excited to see all that they accomplish in kindergarten! :)

Everyone is getting ready for the Winter Olympics to start and I am ready to share some new worksheets that I have made for the month of February! The worksheets meet the 1st grade common core standards but would be a nice challenge for advanced kindergarten students. Be sure to check them out in my TPT store! :)

Love the cute clipart from Melonheadz!

What student doesn't need more story problem practice? ;)

Word Family Fluency Passages

Last year I started writing these silly little fluency passages that would give my students practice at reading our CVC spelling words. I only wanted sight words and CVC or CCVC which limited my ability to create quality stories but I wasn't really concerned with that. I just needed simple, easy stories so my students could gain confidence as brand NEW readers.

I originally listed these passages for sale on TPT with my spelling word pack but then thought that people may just be looking for stories just like I was. Recently my fluency pack has become my best selling item on TPT! :) It was definitely unexpected to see this item shoot to the top but very cool at the same time! :)

I continue to update the file as I write new passages so for anyone who purchases it - don't forget to check back and download the new file! :)