"Phantastic" Phonics Phones

What did I do on my day off today you ask? I made phonics phones! Phonics phones are essential in any primary classroom. They're great when teaching phonics and phonemic awareness.

As a reading specialist, I work with many students who have deficits in these areas and the phonics phones always help them to hear themselves better during instruction. Did you ever notice that many times students can blend together a word when you sound it out for them? In many cases its because they can't hear the sounds well enough themselves. The phonics phone helps them amplify the sound.

Test taking situations are another great use for phonics phones. It helps many of our reluctant readers slow down and listen to what they are reading. It allows them to clarify meaning while they are reading.

So here's how you can make your very own phonics phone:

Head over to Lowes, Home Depot, or your friendly neighborhood hardware store. Pick up 2, 3/4" PVC elbow joints. I just bought a whole bag. It was cheaper that way. Then pick up a 3/4" PVC pipe. These come in 5' and 10' sections so you will have to cut it down to 3 1/2" sections. The friendly people at Lowes or Home Depot can do this for you as well if you don't have access to a hack saw.

( P.S. Don't mind the leftover henna on my hand from a wedding I went to last weekend)

Next? Put them together. Attach the elbow joints on either end of the pipe and viola! I made mine a little bit prettier, too by adding some colorful duct tape that I picked up at Target.

Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy...as my students like to say. Now I have a set for my students to use! The colorful duct tape makes them more alluring to my students as well. And it is helping them to be better readers when they use them. Win, win!

Happy Reading!

Making the Most out of your Listening Resources

Listening resources are a great tool that are heavily used in the primary classrooms, however, there are lots of benefits to using "Listening to Reading" in the upper elementary classrooms as well. They provide a fluent model for students and can help to increase student's vocabulary. This is especially important in classrooms where there is a larger population of Learning Support or ELL students. One problem that many teachers encounter though is that there are not enough age appropriate resources for those upper elementary students or they do not have time to fit "Listening to Reading" into their busy schedules...until now...

This year our Language Arts block is transitioning from a 120 minute block to a 90 minute block. Therefore, that doesn't leave a lot of time for students to be able to listen to reading. The reasoning is because our teachers now have to teach Science and Social Studies everyday. Therefore, we need to be clever with how to implement this. One way is to use cross curricular resources for listening.

Science: Many programs come with their textbooks on CD. During this block of time students can use the CD for "Listen to Reading." Our new science program "Interactive Science" by Pearson has a leveled reader database available. You can register your account (via the green cardboard case with the registration code inside) and access content leveled readers that are available by many different leveling systems, including the DRA. You can then electronically assign readers to students where they can listen to the selection read aloud online by a fluent reader.

What more could you ask for?

Scholastic Readers: There is a student view for your student's scholastic reader online. You can put the link on your website and have students access it from their net books. You can have it read to them using the on level feature or below level feature. View the online user guide below to see all of the Scholastic Reader's features:

Scholastic Online User Guide
Cross curricular resources are a great way to fit in those standards
that that we need to teach to help our students become better readers.

Happy Listening!

Podcasting in Education

What are Podcasts and how can I use them for Education? Podcasts are multimedia digital files made available on the internet for downloading to a portable media player, computer, etc. But even more importantly, you can make your own!

But how can you use them in Education you ask? The possibilities are endless...

Intrigued? Want to make one? Watch the Youtube video below and follow the step by step directions that follow. You'll be podcasting before you know it!




Click here for the 5 steps to Podcasting.

Happy Podcasting!

Listen to Reading

Listening activities are very important in a Balanced Literacy Program. They provide a fluent model for students to hear and learn from. When listening activities are made available, students can listen to examples of fluent readers and then understand what goes into being a fluent or prosodic reader. (i.e.; phrasing, intonation, expression, & rate)

All levels of learners can benefit from the practice of Listening to Reading. By developing good fluency, they will be able to recognize a vast majority of words instantly and effortlessly, thus leaving more cognitive capacity for comprehension. (Rasinski & Kuhn, 2007, P. 205) In addition, they may be exposed to a text they otherwise would not be able to read independently, thereby increasing exposure to higher level vocabulary.


Here are FREE resources that you can use for "Listen to Reading":

Barnes & Noble has an online storytime that is free. Click here.

The Screen Actors Guild has a free online video streaming program where famous actors read popular children's books. Click here.

Read to Me is a online youth reading program. Watch online streaming of videos of children's books read aloud by celebrities. Click here.

Robert Munsch is a great author who has recorded himself reading his wonderful children's books. Click here.

Mem Fox is an award winning author who has many read alouds available on her website. Click here.

Kizclub has a variety of books read aloud for beginning readers. Click here.

Starfall is a great site that isn't just for phonics practice. It also has read alongs for a variety of primary readers. Click here.

Don't forget the power of Youtube. Here is a blogger who has posted great read alouds she found on youtube. Click here.

You can also search for your own on the following sites:

Youtube.com

Teachertube.com

Schooltube.com




Here are resources for "Listen to Reading" that require a fee:

Scholastic's new online literacy resource. Click here.

Educational and fun animated children's books. Click here.




Raz-kids is a compilation of hundreds of interactive ebooks for students grades K-6. Click here.

Tumblebooks is an online collection of animated talking picture books. Click here.


Happy Reading!


Gambrell, L.(2007).Best Practices in Literacy Instruction: Third Edition. New York: Guilford Press.