Phonics Teaching Resources
Make teaching phonics easy with printable phonics worksheets, activities, games and more designed for elementary ELA and ELAR teachers.
This collection of curriculum-aligned teaching resources has been carefully reviewed by our expert teaching team to make sure every resource is classroom-ready — so we can make your lesson planning easier!
New to teaching phonics, or just looking for new ways to engage your students? Read on for a primer from our teacher team!
What Is Phonics?
You've likely heard the word "phonics" thousands of times throughout your own education and maybe on one of those old as from the '90s. But what is phonics, exactly?
Phonics is technically defined as the systematic instruction of the relationships between letters and sounds in written language. But that's a mouthful, isn't it? More simply, phonics is the word we use to refer to the method of teaching reading by focusing on the relationship between written letters and the sounds they represent.
In phonics, kids learn how to decode written words by recognizing the sound-symbol correspondence.
Phonics vs. Phonemic Awareness
When we start talking about letters and their sounds, we start to wander into phonemic awareness territory. So what's the difference?
The words phonics and phonemic are similar, and the two concepts are — surprise, surprise — related. But there are key differences.
Phonemic awareness is essentially the ability to identify and manipulate individual sounds — aka phonemes — in spoken language. It's those individual sounds and their correspondence to the letter symbols that can be used by kids to then decode written words.
So students learn to recognize the individual sounds of spoken language (phonemes) and how these sounds can be represented by letters (graphemes) in written language. Then they apply this knowledge to decode written words by understanding the sound-symbol correspondence.
Consider this example:
- Let's say your student can identify the separate sounds in a spoken word such as "cat" (i.e., /k/ /a/ /t/). That's phonemic awareness.
- Now let's say you're teaching that same student that the letter "c" represents the /k/ sound and that the letter "a" represents the /a/ sound, and that these sounds combine to form the word "cat." That's phonics!
How to Teach Phonics
OK, you probably already know that phonics is all about teaching word recognition via grapheme-phoneme associations and letter-sound correspondences.
It’s a means of teaching early readers the pieces that make up a word so they can blend them together to decode the English language as readers and writers.
But how do you teach it?
In the earliest stages, phonics instruction typically begins with teaching students the most common letter-sound relationships. You start with consonants, then move on to vowels, then consonant blends.
Students then learn to sound out words by decoding the letters and blending the sounds together to form words.
Phonics Vocabulary Terms
The English language system is one of the hardest to teach and learn, so how do you teach phonics? Let’s start with the phonics vocabulary.
- For starters, there are 26 letters that create approximately 44 phonemes, the word for the individual speech sounds that make up words. Put together, phonemes make words. OK, easy enough, right?
- Well, these phonemes can be written in over more than 200 different letter combinations, known as graphemes. Graphemes can be made up of 1 letter (such as “p” in “pig”), 2 letters (such as “gh” in ghost), 3 letters (such as “igh” in night), or 4 letters (such as “ough” in rough).
- Then there are digraphs or two letters that work together to make one sound — such as “ph” in graph. But wait, isn’t that a grapheme? Yup, a digraph is a type of grapheme.
- So is a trigraph, trigraphs, aka three letters that work together to make one sound, such as “dge” in edge.
- And if you’re teaching phonics, you can’t forget dipthongs, the name for a sound that is formed by the combination of two vowels in a single syllable, such as “ou” in loud.
Most students will spend kindergarten, first, and even second grade getting a handle on all phonics elements!
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My Little Sight Word Book - He
A little book with activities for the sight word ‘he’.
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My Little Sight Word Book - With
A little book with activities for the sight word ‘with’.
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Little Alphabet Book Worksheets (A-Z)
A set of 26 worksheets to assist younger students with letter recognition and formation.
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My Little Sight Word Book - Her
A little book of activities for the sight word ‘her’.
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My Little Sight Word Book - As
A little book of activities for the sight word 'as'.
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My Little Sight Word Book - At
A little book of activities for the sight word 'at'.
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My Little Sight Word Book - His
A little book of activities for the sight word 'his'.
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My Little Sight Word Book - Are
A little book of activities for the sight word 'are'.
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My Little Sight Word Book - Not
A little book of activities for the sight word ‘not’.
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Parts of a Book Poster
A poster that displays the parts of a book.
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My Little Sight Word Book - For
A little book of activities for the sight word ‘for’.
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My Little Sight Word Book - But
A little book of activities for the sight word 'but'.
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Identifying Short Vowel Sounds Interactive PowerPoint
An interactive quiz to practice identifying short vowel sounds in words.
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My Little Sight Word Book - One
A little book of activities for the sight word ‘one’.
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Solve and Shuffle - Letter Sounds PowerPoint Game
An active PowerPoint game to practice initial letter sounds.
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CVC Word Building Mats
A set of 25 word building mats using consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words.
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Build It! Letter Sounds Task Cards
Practice identifying and writing the beginning sounds of words with this set of 28 task cards.
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Alphabet Slap
A fun game for letter, consonant, and vowel recognition.
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Initial Sound Clip Cards (Version 1)
A hands-on activity to practice initial sounds.
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Sight Word Mini Books
A set of 12 mini sight word books to use as little readers with your students.
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Mold It! Task Cards
A set of 28 task cards to use with modeling clay.
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Bowling Game - Beginning Sounds
Practice applying letter-sound correspondence with 26 picture cards and letter pins.
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Bowling Game - Letter Match
Practice matching upper and lowercase letters with 26 letter bowling ball cards and pins.
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Bowling Game - Dolch First Grade Sight Words
Practice reading and matching 41 high-frequency words on the Dolch First Grade sight words list.
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Bowling Game - CCVC Words
Bowl your way through reading 36 CCVC words!
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Alphabet and Digit Mini Flashcards
A set of alphabet (uppercase and lowercase) and digit (0-9) flashcards.
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Animal-Themed Decoding Strategy Posters for the Classroom
Remind students of the different decoding strategies they can use when reading with this poster set.
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Letter Match Clip Cards
A fun, hands-on activity to practice matching uppercase and lowercase letters.
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Bowling Game - CVC Words
Bowl your way through reading 36 CVC words!
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Bowling Game - CVCC Words
Bowl your way through reading and spelling 30 CVCC words!
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Bowling Game - Dolch Primer Sight Words
Practice reading and matching 52 high-frequency words on the Dolch Kindergarten sight words list.
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Bowling Game - Dolch Pre-Primer Sight Words
Practice reading and matching 40 high-frequency words on the Dolch Pre-K sight words list.