Activities for first graders reading

First Grade Reading Comprehension Activities

First grade is an exciting time of discovery for early readers. They’re spending less time decoding and word solving and more time comprehending and making sense of the texts they’re reading. Early readers are building reading identities and reading for meaning and joy. Explicitly teaching reading comprehension strategies like making predictions, asking questions, retelling, and inferring helps young readers build the skills they need. These first grade reading comprehension activities are a good place to start.

1. String up a retelling rope

Learning how to retell a story helps young learners as readers and thinkers. It helps them organize their thoughts as they read and recognize when their thinking changes. Using these symbols representing different elements of a story, students can string up a cute retelling rope while gaining valuable comprehension skills.

Learn more: First Grade W.O.W.

2. Visualize the story with illustrations

Visualizing is an important skill for understanding what you’re reading. This blog includes two fun visualizing activities. In the first, students are given a title and are asked to draw an illustration that matches that title. In the second, students are given clues about an object and are asked to draw the object the clues are hinting at.

Learn more: You Clever Monkey

3. Make predictions with a graphic organizer

Making predictions is a just-right reading strategy for emerging readers. During a read-aloud, find a few good stopping points to ask students what they think will happen next.

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Learn more: Brown Bag Teacher

4. Make a “beginning, middle, and end” flip chart

One tried-and-true way to teach summarizing to early readers is instructing them to identify the beginning, middle, and end of a story. This easy-to-make flip chart is just an 8 x 11 piece of plain paper folded vertically then divided into thirds. On the front half, students will draw a picture of what happens in the three sections of the story. Underneath each flap is a short written description.

Learn more: Bishop’s Blackboard

5. Ask questions with story sticks

Good readers ask questions before, during, and after they read. These cute story sticks make a game of first grade reading comprehension. Perfect to use with small reading groups or with partners.

Learn more: The Happy Teacher

6. Master the five-finger retell

One strategy you can teach students is the five finger retell. Each finger stands for a different part of the story. Assigning a different finger for each part gives students a kinesthetic connection and makes it easier for them to remember.

Learn more: Mrs. Wheeler’s First Grade Tidbits

7. Summarize using simple signal words

Sometimes with early readers, simpler is better. Start with these basic questions—who?, what?, when?, where?, how?, and why?—to help kids go deeper into their understanding.

Learn more: This Reading Mama

8.

There are tons of fun tools to help students build reading comprehension, and story maps are one of them. Here are 15 free downloadable story maps to help your first graders practice going beyond just the words when they read.

Learn more: Education.com

9. Figure out problem and solution with a graphic organizer

Every fiction story has, among other elements, a problem and solution. This lesson helps students understand that a story’s problem and solution fit together like pieces of a puzzle.

Learn more: My Primary Paradise

10. Retell the story using LEGO bricks

Put two things that first graders love together: reading and building. Read a story together, then allow students to use blocks to build a scene from the story. As they build, they can describe details from the story.

Learn more: The Educators’ Spin On It

11. Retell using story cubes

Retelling is a helpful comprehension skill for readers. These six cubes encourage readers to retell the story in different ways. They are prefect for reading partners and to use with small groups.

Learn more: Every educaid

 12. Play the Oh Snap! word game

Sight words (aka high-frequency words) are words readers encounter most frequently in texts. Early readers benefit from knowing a large bank of sight words, which encourages fluent reading. This fun sight word game is a great way to improve reading skills and build reading fluency.

Learn more: School Time Snippets

13. Use scooping phrases

The goal of reading fluency is better comprehension. To read with fluency or expression, readers must comprehend the story events. Teach early readers to use “Scooping Phrases” to scoop up words to form phrases within sentences. This effective strategy also works well with struggling readers.

Learn more: This Reading Mama

14. Introduce wordless picture books

As readers encounter more-difficult texts, character traits become less explicit. To determine what the character is like, the reader has to do more inferential work. Using wordless picture books is a great way to introduce early readers to making inferences.

Learn more: Ashleigh’s Education Journey

15. Inference using thought bubbles

Foundational inference activities give first graders an opportunity to practice their inferring skills. As they move into texts, first graders can infer what a character is thinking in the story and then add a thought bubble to explain it.

Learn more: The Teacher Next Door

If you like these first grade reading comprehension activities, check out our fun, printable first grade writing prompts.

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29 Fun and Easy 1st Grade Reading Comprehension Activities

First grade is such an important time for a child. They are becoming more independent in a variety of ways! One of the most important aspects of this independence is their reading. Reading will be the foundation for everything they do in the future. This is why reading comprehension comes in full force during these pivotal developmental years.

Building comprehension skills can be a daunting experience for parents, caregivers, and educators. This is most likely why you ended up here. Keep reading for a total breakdown of some of the best comprehension strategies that can be both used at home and in the classroom!

In first grade, we LOVE puzzles. This is why puzzle retelling builds such excellent comprehension skills. Using background knowledge helps kids to be confident and excited about a comprehension activity. Puzzle retelling is also super easy to set up!

Learn more: teacherspayteachers.com

Any elementary teacher will tell you how much they love the 5-finger retelling comprehension activity. This activity gives students the visual of retelling a story. It’s also, so much fun! Teachers have been known to incorporate finger puppets, a comprehension worksheet, and many different creative comprehension strategies.

Learn more: teacherspayteachers.com

Sight word practice is one of the all-important reading and comprehension skills for Grade 1. Creating active readers by building vocabulary through an active vocabulary game is one of the best ways to keep your children engaged. Here are a few great sight word comprehension activities.

Cute story sticks are always a great way to teach sight words! This is something you can easily make for your classroom and at home!

Bingo is always a favorite! It is great and always a highly rated vocabulary game. Here you'll find a FREE resource that allows you to generate a bingo card based on the sight words students are learning and the basis of their background knowledge.

There are so many colorful reading comprehension reading worksheets that go along with sight word vocabulary. There are tons of these worksheets throughout the web, here is a FREE resource to see how your students and children will respond.

First grade is a time of discovery for children. Visualizing and making mental images is an exciting time for young learners. Providing them with the comprehension skills they need for a love of reading. Mental images can be a great way to incorporate writing prompts into your child’s reading comprehension activities.

Mrs. Jump’s class has some great comprehension activities. Here are some mental image comprehension activities!

Comprehension checks may not sound that exciting BUT they can always be fun! Your children will love all of the colorful reading comprehension worksheets that come with comprehension checks. You can make them yourself quite easily, which makes them perfect for at home or in the classroom. Here are some resources for your classroom!

Brain Movies are a great way to build student comprehension skills. Making a Brain Movie is easy for you and for your students. Here is a great way to incorporate it into your classroom.

During a read-aloud, pause when you come across a descriptive passage. Have students close their eyes and picture what is happening, while you are reading! This blog gives a great breakdown of how to incorporate this in your classroom and the importance of Brain Movies incorporation.

Printable story mats are easy to make and great for comprehension! You can make them any size that fits your needs. You can find a free download online here.

Puppets are a great way to get your students engaged, active, and laughing. Puppets can be used for a variety of comprehension activities. Here is a blog that gives an amazing breakdown for using puppets to build comprehension skills.

Modeling active reading with your students is extremely important when reading anything. It is important to discuss what is happening in the story as you read. This will help your child to understand and empathize with the characters.

Make sure to ask questions that the child can relate to - Have you ever felt this way? What do you think happened? How do you think he/she/it feels? - Provoking and furthering a child’s thinking process will most definitely help their comprehension skills.

Here is a great blog post to help you practice active reading in the classroom and at home.

Think-alouds are one of the most amazing comprehension tactics! Think-alouds give students the space to make connections in their lives. When practicing the think-aloud comprehension strategy you should always connect a book back to a time that the child can relate to.

By connecting the book to other book’s the child has read, the child’s life experiences, and the ideas and lessons in the book you are helping to build a relationship with books. Here is a great blog that will help you use this comprehension strategy.

Incorporating media into the classroom has long been a part of the newest curriculum. It can sometimes be difficult to use media effectively in your ELA curriculum. This video can be used as an entire class, or in small groups. Either way, it will help you to assess students on their knowledge of reading aloud or in their heads and answering questions.

Learn more: North Carolina Department of Public Instruction

This is another video that will be perfect for your kiddos to complete on their own or in small groups. Listening to others read is very important for first grade, language development. In this video, students will listen to the story and answer the questions that follow.

Learn more: Hand 2 Mind

Wordwall provides some of the most entertaining lessons on the web! These lessons are created and shared by other teachers. The activity below can be used in both small groups or as a whole group lesson to assess where your students are in their level of comprehension!

Learn more: Worldwall

The random wheel is such a fun classroom integration. Project this wheel on a smartboard and have students spin on their turn. Whether students answer these questions in small groups or individually, they will love to play. The best part about this random wheel is that it can be used with any story.

Learn more: Worldwall

Another amazing activity offered by Word Wall is "Open the Box". This activity resembles a bit like the random wheel, but students are asked to click on a box instead of spinning the wheel. Put a twist on this game and use the questions to make your very own classroom board!

Learn more: Worldwall

Giving even our youngest learners a clear understanding of exactly what is expected from a lesson is vital to their success. This video provides students and teachers with a better understanding of what it means to visualize. Understanding vocabulary can make explanations and student understanding that much stronger at the end of the day.

Learn more: Shannon McGilloway

It's important to note that most stories that are aimed at younger students have some sort of connection to their feelings. Therefore, using a visualization strategy that connects the story to different feelings a child might have, could be vital to helping them better understand and comprehend the story.

Learn more: Toni Allen

Any teacher knows that songs help students to remember and understand different strategies and lessons. Just like with anything else, making a song for visualizing a story will help students refer back to their understanding. This song is great for exactly that and it's definitely one to get stuck in your head!

Learn more: Teacher Friend

Being able to retell the story is part of the common core curriculum in first grade. It's important to provide students with a variety of different stories throughout your lessons. With some being ones they know by heart and others being totally new. Use this short Tortoise and the Hare read aloud and have students reenact it!

Learn more: Get Set Parents

Well, just like with visualizing, it's pretty evident that teachers know how important songs are to students' understanding and comprehension. This song is perfect for being able to retell the story. Students will have a better understanding of the different parts of the story, making it easier for them to understand and retell the story.

Learn more: Jack Hartmann Kids Music Channel

In a world that is centralized around distance learning and working from home, it's important to have materials ready to go in an event that students won't be in school. This video does just that and provides details for both students, teachers, and even parents to have a full grasp of the learning objective.

Learn more: Mandy Yates

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Another very fun activity for reading comprehension is understanding different character traits! A simple and fun way to do this in first grade is to make a poster together about one of the student's favorite stories. First, read the story together and then create a poster that can be displayed in the classroom.

Learn more: Life Between Summers

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This is a pre-reading comprehension strategy that can really be tailored for any grade, age, or story! This dot to dot activity with help to activate prior knowledge and build vocabulary that may arise in the story.

Learn more: Invitation to Play and Learn

There's no doubt that reading comprehension and fluidity go hand in hand. Constant practice with students' reading skills, will ultimately help them to improve their comprehension skills.

Learn more: Invitation to Play and Learn

This video will walk students through a read-aloud and retelling activity. The best part about this video is that you can take it and complete it with students or send it home for an at-home distance learning activity. Tailor is to your curriculum and enjoy!

Learn more: The Elementary ELL Teacher, Mrs. Brenda Pearson

In all honestly, bringing a game show on the computer into the classroom can be a total hit or miss. Although, this particular game show is right at the level of most first graders! Making it that much more engaging. At the end have your students join the leaderboard and see if you can get to #1.

Learn more: Worldwall

How easy it is to teach a child 4-6 years old to read - the best methods and exercises

How to understand that it's time

To the question "When is it time for a child to be able to read?" there is no ready-made answer, but we want to immediately warn against two misconceptions:

1. “It is not necessary to teach a child to read at home, they will teach you at school anyway. ” Yes, they will. But remember: the first year at school is the most intense in all 11 years of study. For some 4-5 months in the 1st grade, the child goes through the alphabet "from" and "to", learns to read, write, and the rest of the time he studies the basics of the Russian language. Therefore, it will be great if he has a reading skill before school. This will reduce the burden on the child.

2. "There is no time to waste - the sooner the baby begins to read, the better." All children are different and develop at their own pace. Therefore, you should not impose teaching reading to a preschooler as soon as he is 4-5 years old, if the student himself does not yet show interest in this activity. Instead, you can begin to develop an interest in reading through bright and engaging books. A good option would also be games that involve letters.

The indicator to be guided by is not the age of the preschooler, but his speech skills.

It's time to learn to read if...

If the speech development of a preschooler proceeds without gross violations. Let's figure out what criteria will help you find out if a child is ready to learn to read:

1. Understanding addressed speech. The kid must understand sentences, phrases, individual words that others around him turn to.

2. Vocabulary. The more words a child knows, the better he will understand what he read. It will also help him communicate with adults and other children.

3. Grammar. The ability to correctly build sentences, select and change words is important for children who are learning to read.

4. Pronunciation. For learning to be effective, the child must know how to pronounce words without gross errors.

Remember: at preschool age, a child may have minor mistakes in grammar and pronunciation - this is normal. Over time, these violations will be corrected, and they should not be considered an obstacle to reading. But if the baby is not yet very confident in speaking, do not rush him to read - this will not help develop speech, but only demotivate.

Your A in English.

With detailed homework solutions from Skysmart

Making reading easier for preschoolers

1. Praise more and never scold

   It's hard for us adults to imagine how difficult it really is for a baby to learn from scratch such a complex skill as reading. After all, being able to read means being able to correlate a sound with a letter or a combination of letters, connect sounds, understand the meanings of the words read and the meaning behind the text.

   If parents take the child's progress for granted and express dissatisfaction when the child does not understand something, this will not push the future student to development, but will only complicate the process. Therefore, it is important to praise for small victories: I learned the letter that was passed last time - great, I coped without my father's help with the word as much as two syllables - clever.

   Do not take failures as a consequence of the negligence of the little student. When a child does not understand the first time, this is an occasion to look for another explanation or give more time to practice. If you feel tired and irritated, you should stop the activity and return to it in a good mood.

2. Exercise little but regularly

   Do not expect perseverance and a desire to spend hours figuring out unfamiliar letters from your baby. It is difficult for preschoolers to keep their attention in a lesson for more than 25 minutes, and even such small classes should be interrupted with physical education minutes and games so that the child does not get bored. This is exactly how Skysmart prepares for school: 25-minute classes with breaks for outdoor games.

   But regular practice is important - much more important than the duration of the session. And it doesn’t have to be just lessons: you can look for familiar letters on signs during a walk, on a door plate in a children’s clinic, on a package of your favorite corn flakes.

3. Read books aloud

   In a series of studies conducted by Dr. Victoria Purcell-Gates among five-year-olds who could not yet read, those children to whom their parents regularly read aloud for two years expressed their thoughts in more literary language, built longer phrases and used more complex syntax.

   In addition, reading aloud with adults contributed to the expansion of the children's vocabulary, as parents explained the meanings of new words that children did not encounter in everyday life.

Expert Opinion

According to neuroscientist Marianne Wolfe, book evenings with parents help develop a love of reading because the child establishes a connection between reading aloud and feelings of love and warmth.

4. Discuss read

   The role of communication in teaching literacy cannot be overestimated. At first, it is important to ask if the future student is interested, if he is tired, what was remembered from the lesson. When a preschooler learns to read coherent texts, be sure to ask questions about their content.

   It's great if the child reads on his own and without the prompting of the parents, but even in this case, do not deprive him of the opportunity to discuss what he has read with you. For example, you can ask:

   • Which of the characters do you like?

   • Do you think this character is like you? Would you like to be like her?

   • What would you do if you were a hero?

   • Why did the described event happen? How are these two events related?

   • How did what you read make you feel?

   • What do you remember most from what you read?

   • What do you think the author wanted to teach? Why did he write this? Do you agree with the author?

It is important to select questions individually, based on the age of the child. With younger children, discuss everything together, ask simple questions, direct their attention to some facts. The complexity of the questions should increase in proportion to the age of the child. The older he is, the more difficult the tasks should be, and the questions can already affect the "reflection" of their feelings and experiences.

5. Go from simple to complex

   From the correspondence between sounds and letters to syllables, from short words to longer and more complex words. It would seem that this is obvious, but no: sometimes parents are so happy with the success of the child at first that they push him to study more complex topics than he is ready to accept. Of course, the program should adapt to the future student, but you should not skip steps, even if the child is making progress.

   There are methods that offer to teach a child to read by memorizing whole words. Alas, experiments show that such techniques generally work worse. For example, a group of scientists from the United States came up with an artificial alphabet and offered subjects to learn it, and then read the words written using this alphabet. At the same time, some subjects were immediately explained the principles of correspondence between sounds and letters, while others had to derive reading rules on their own based on whole words. It turned out that the first group copes with reading new, previously unfamiliar words better than the second.

   Therefore, we advise you to choose those teaching methods that involve clear instructions about the relationship between sound and letter - and this is especially important for those children who have difficulty reading. Below we have compiled a few of these techniques that you can use to teach your preschooler at home.

Methods of teaching preschoolers to read

Warehouse reading

The way to teach a child to read through warehouses was actually used in Rus', but for modern parents this technique is associated with the name of the philologist Nikolai Alexandrovich Zaitsev.

Zaitsev suggests not focusing on the study of individual letters, as it can be difficult for students to understand how letters can merge into syllables and words. Teaching a child to read by syllables is also not always easy: one syllable can be quite long ( shine, ruble ), and the boundaries of syllables are not obvious ( Lun-tik or Lu-ntik ?). Therefore, in Zaitsev's methodology, a warehouse is used as the main unit.

Warehouse can be a combination of a consonant and a vowel (pa-pa, ma-ma), a single consonant or vowel (de- d , i-s -li, A -le-sha), as well as a combination of a consonant with a hard or soft sign (ma- l -chi-k, po- d -yem).

In order for a preschooler to understand the differences between the recording of voiced and soft, vowel and consonant sounds, different types of warehouses have their own cube size, color and content, thanks to which the cubes sound when they are shaken. Cubes affect several channels of perception at once, and warehouses should not just be pronounced, but sung - this way, according to the author of the methodology, learning is more interesting and effective.

One of the advantages of the technique is that children willingly play with blocks themselves, and the process of learning to read becomes active and mobile.

Syllabic reading

This technique, according to some sources, was developed by the Romans. Later, Nadezhda Sergeevna Zhukova, a Soviet and Russian speech therapist, created a primer based on it. In it, she built her own system in which sounds and letters are sequentially introduced into speech.

Due to the fact that the concept of a syllable is introduced at an early stage, it is faster and easier to teach a child to read syllables together. By the way, as in Zaitsev's technique, it is proposed to sing syllables, and not just pronounce them.

Based on the syllabic method, Zhukova developed a set of teaching aids - copybooks, copybooks and a book for reading. Benefits will help teach children to read correctly 6 and 7 years old at home.

Both techniques for teaching preschoolers to read are used in the Skysmart Ready for School course. The course consists of two stages: first, children get acquainted with letters and warehouses, which allows them to quickly start reading simple words, and then they learn what a syllable is. Gradually, we introduce more complex syllabic constructions, move on to reading phrases and sentences.

Sound analytical-synthetic teaching method

This method originated in the USSR and is still considered the main one in Russian schools and kindergartens. It was developed by the Soviet teacher and Russian language methodologist Voskresenskaya Alexandra Ilyinichna.

Same as N.S. Zhukova, Voskresenskaya proposed her own order in which children should learn letters and sounds. The principle of this sequence was that the child first learned the letters that can be combined into simple syllables, and then moved forward in the level of complexity. As a result, children learn syllables in this order:

1. Two-letter syllables (including one consonant): am, ma, ra, etc. and simple words from them: ra-ma, ma-sha, Pa-sha, etc.

2. Three-letter syllables with a central vowel: poppy, lat, etc.

3. Combination of the first two stages into words: sa-lat, earth-la, etc.

4. Words of three syllables and six letters: az-bu-ka, ve-se-lo, etc.

5. Words of two syllables and six letters: question-ros, tea-nick, etc.

6. Words with a combination of vowels at the beginning and at the end of the word: chair, March, etc.

In this way, children simultaneously prepare for more complex syllables at each stage and reinforce what they have learned earlier.

Exercises for learning to read

Learning to read, as a rule, takes place in several stages. First, the child listens to the sound, visually remembers the letters. Different games will help with this, where you need to look for letters, invent words, etc. When this stage is over, you can move on to syllables and games to work them out. And only after that it will be possible to proceed to words, and then to sentences and texts.

Letter memory exercises

The first step is to teach your child to recognize letters. To do this, you can use pictures with hidden letters. We use such exercises in the preparation for school lessons in Skysmart.

Ask your child to identify what letter a word begins with, or name as many words as possible that begin with a certain letter.

Next, we train to distinguish correctly written letters from incorrect ones. This is also important for learning to write: preschoolers often mirror letters or distort individual elements.

Exercises for vowels and consonants

To learn how to distinguish between vowels and consonants, tasks will help you determine the sound with which a word begins.

It will also help to remember the difference between vowels and consonants and search for an extra letter.

Word building exercises

When the child can read short words, ask him to form a word from the letters on his own.

Composing words from syllables is convenient if you have cubes at hand, but you can also try on paper.

Another good exercise is to fill in the missing letter in a word. Children perform such tasks in the lessons in the Skysmart online school.

For more colorful and fun reading activities, check out the Skysmart Ready for School course. Attentive teachers will help the child learn to read, count and express themselves through creativity. Classes are held online at a convenient time for the child and parents. Try it for free with an introductory lesson!

11 fun activities to prepare your child for reading

Try these activities to teach your child the four key components of successful reading: understanding syllables, understanding words and sentences, rhyming, phonemic awareness.

We have prepared for you a colorful poster with these exercises for printing (download links below, under the text)!

1. Collect the word (Understanding syllables).

Explain that syllables are parts of words. Demonstrate by saying the word and pushing one block in a row accentuating each syllable. Gather the cubes back into a pile before saying the next word. Instead of blocks, you can give the children small paper squares for a group activity. Prepare a list of words to practice. For example, you can practice words related to something your child is currently learning.

2. What's in the box (Understanding syllables).

Collect several items in a box or basket. Be sure to include items that differ from each other in the number of syllables in their name. Invite the child to close their eyes, choose an item from the box, and name it (for example, “This is a pencil”). All children must repeat the name of the chosen subject and clap their hands, emphasizing each syllable. Then ask the class to say in chorus how many syllables they heard.

3. I went to the store (Rhymes).

Have students sit in a circle and give them something to throw, such as a small ball or a pillow. To start the game, say "I went to the store to buy meat", then toss the ball to the student. The student should repeat the phrase and add a rhyming word at the end, for example: “I went to the store to buy kvass (or a vase, lasso, blot, etc.)”. Then the student should throw the ball back to the teacher, who repeats the original phrase with a new word that needs to come up with a rhyme (for example, “I went to the store to buy cheese (or fat, kefir, figs”). Maintain a fast pace so that the children do not lose interest.

4. The ship is loaded ... (Rhymes).

Have the children sit in a circle and make sure you have something to throw, such as a ball or pillow. To start the game, say "The ship is loaded with cheese." Then throw the ball to one of the students. This student must come up with a rhyme (for example, “The ship is loaded with kefir”) and throw the ball back to you. After repeating the original phrase, throw the ball to another child. Continue the game in this way until the children run out of rhymes. Then name another cargo on the ship and continue the game. Come up with new game situations to expand the list of possible rhymes.

5. Listen to the words in a sentence (Understanding words and sentences).

Give each child six or seven regular bricks, Lego bricks, or construction paper squares that they will use to represent the words in the sentence you will make for them, one brick for each word. Brainstorm with the children by showing them how to repeat your sentences to themselves, word by word, with clear pauses between each sentence. Invite the children to arrange the blocks in order from left to right so that they begin to master the orientation. After they have laid out the blocks, have the students repeat your sentence, pointing to each block as they say the word it represents.

6. ​​Name the animals (phonemic perception).

Use animal cards or photos cut from magazines. Give the students pictures and ask them to name the animals. Ask: “What sound do you hear at the beginning/end of this animal’s name?” This game can be expanded with more pictures on different topics and students can play it in pairs.

"Thanks to advances in neuroscience and technology, not only do we now understand why experienced readers read well and others struggle with reading, but we can also help any reader on their journey from early language acquisition to reading and reading comprehension “It all happens in the brain!”

7. Guess who? (phonemic perception).

Have the children sit in a circle and say, "Guess whose name I'm going to say now." Then choose one of the students and clearly pronounce only the initial phoneme of his name. For names that begin with a plosive consonant, such as Danya, the phoneme must be repeated over and over again, clearly and distinctly: “/d/ /d/ /d/ /d/ /d/”. Fricative consonants should be stretched and repeated (for example, “/s-s-s-s/ / s-s-s-s / /s-s-s-s/ /s-s-s-s /”). If several children's names start with the same phoneme, have the children guess all the possible options. This will show the children that each phoneme appears in many different words.

8. Simple words (Isolation and identification of phonemes).

Give yourself and each child three colored cubes. Begin by saying a two-letter word (such as "yes"), clearly separating it into parts: "y ... a." Ask the children to repeat what you said. Then all children have to represent the word with two blocks of different colors to show that it consists of two sounds. Further explain that words can consist of more than two sounds. To demonstrate this, say the word “gift,” “d...a...r,” and have the children repeat the word in unison. To represent the third phoneme, place a new block to the right of the other two blocks, saying the entire word, phoneme by phoneme, pointing to each block in turn from left to right.

9. Funny words (Isolation and identification of phonemes).

Show the children the sound and ask them to substitute it for the sound at the beginning of their names or any other words. The teacher might say, “A funny sound is /b/. Change the first sound in your name to /b/”, for example, Masha will become Basha, and Stas will become Btas.

10. Conversation with a robot (phoneme fusion).

Pronounce the word, stretching it out, pausing about a second between each phoneme. Then ask students to repeat the whole word to you. For example, when a teacher says: “/h/.../e/.../r/... /n/.../s/.../d/”, students respond: “Black!”

11. Head-girdle-legs (Segmentation of phonemes).

This is a great activity to help students identify inner sounds.

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