Short Vowel Practice

We are starting digraphs this week and wrapped up our short vowel review last week.  We've been in school for 9 weeks now {WHOA!}.  It may seem like we are moving at a slower pace than what you would think, but many of our students do not attend pre-school and come to kindergarten very behind.  We are always playing catch-up.  We spend the first two or three weeks on procedures, routines, behavior, etc..during that time we are also reviewing letter ID, letter sounds, and alphabet order.  After that, we move into short vowels...starting with a and all the word families that go with it.  Each week is dedicated to a short vowel and its word families.  This helps get our kids back into "reading/school" mode.  It also refreshes them from kindergarten, as many do not have books at home and do not read during the summer months.  Today I am sharing a few of my favorite things to do with CvC words.

Each week, we have a poem that goes along with one of our cvc word families that we are studying. We practice the poem every day and by Friday, the kids read it chorally {or alone!} and then we go on a word family and sight word hunt.  Finally, the poems are placed into their poetry folders.  Each week, we re-read old poems before adding our new one.  The kids are also allowed to read their old poems whenever they have extra time or during quiet reading time.

On Mondays, we always begin with a word sort.  Both the kids and I write the words.  Then we read them together and look for the patterns to circle/color.  Finally, the kids take turns making sentences orally with their words.

We practice on our slates one day during the week.  This is usually a phoneme substitution activity. Sometimes, we break into teams and have dry erase races where I call a word and the teams race to spell it correctly!  The kids love this!

We do word sorts with practice pages or cards.

We play a game once or twice...Jeopardy is a favorite!!!  *All my Phonics Jeopardy games are bundled.  You can also purchase them individually.

I try to incorporate a craft, as well.  This ladybug is from Crafty Bee Creations.  I just made some short u dots to go with it!

We do a find-a-friend or write-the-room-activity.

I pull kids for extra practice {when I can!!}.  We do flash card races, which is a favorite.  We also play "Around the World" with the word cards.

Listening for the vowel sounds in words I call out and clipping accordingly on our vowel clip charts is a great way to review!

Reading our cvc fluency strips helps us get faster at decoding these words!

We practice the word family/vowel sound we are working on in centers...this was one of last week's center activities...we were reviewing all 5 vowel sounds.

Here's another center from a few weeks back when we were reviewing short a and short e.  They are working on clip cards...matching word families to pictures.  Magnetic letter practice is a favorite, too!

We practice sentence writing...using our sentence rubric.  This is excellent practice!  The rubric is a nice visual.

MORE CVC RESOURCES:

xo
Megan