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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Sight Word Hunt - Dolch Pre-Primer
Practice reading high frequency words by sight with a set of 6 Dolch Pre-Primer Sight Words game boards.
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Sight Word Hunt - Dolch Primer
Practice reading high-frequency words by sight with a set of 8 Dolch Primer Sight Words game boards.
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Jurassic Fantastic - CVC Words Board Game
Practice decoding and spelling CVC words with this board game of 27 CVC word cards.
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Sweet Sight Words - First Grade Dolch Sight Words Board Game
Practice reading high-frequency words with this board game of 41 First Grade Dolch sight word cards.
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Sweet Sight Words - Pre-K Dolch Sight Words Board Game
Practice reading high-frequency words with this board game of 41 pre-kindergarten Dolch sight word cards.
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Sweet Sight Words - Kindergarten Dolch Sight Words Board Game
Practice reading high-frequency words with this board game of 53 Kindergarten Dolch sight word cards.
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Reading CVCC Words - Picture Puzzle
Practice decoding CVCC words with this 15 piece picture puzzle.
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Reading CCVC Words - Picture Puzzle
Practice decoding CCVC words with this 15 piece picture puzzle.
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ASL Fingerspelling Alphabet Flashcards
A set of 26 flashcards to show how to represent the letters of the alphabet when fingerspelling in ASL (American Sign Language).
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Vowel Sounds Winter Picture Puzzle
Distinguish between long and short vowel sounds with this 15 piece vowel picture puzzle.
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Reading CVC Words - Picture Puzzle
Decode CVC words with this 15 piece puzzle.
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Four in a Row Game - CVC Words
Practice decoding 11 different CVC words with this word card and picture game board set.
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Four in a Row Game - Letter Sounds
Practice applying letter-sound correspondence with 26 picture cards, 26 letter cards, and a beginning letter sounds picture game board.
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Color by Letter (c, k, e, h, r) - Toucan
A color by letter activity for students to practice letter recognition.
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Initial Sound Sorting Activity (s, a, t, p, i, and n)
A sorting activity to practice initial sounds regarding the letters s, a, t, p, i, and n.
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Color by Letter (s,a,t,p,i,n) - Chameleon
A color by letter activity for students to practice letter recognition.
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Primary Weekly Poetry Guide - Weeks 4 and 5
Use this weekly poetry guide to celebrate National Poetry Month in your primary classroom.
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Tic-Tac-Toe Game: Short U CVC Words
Practice reading short /u/ CVC words with this set of 6 tic-tac-toe games.
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Tic-Tac-Toe Game: Short I CVC Words
Practice reading short /i/ CVC words with this set of 6 tic-tac-toe games.
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Tic-Tac-Toe Game: Short O CVC Words
Practice reading short /o/ CVC words with this set of 6 tic-tac-toe games.
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Tic-Tac-Toe Game: Short A CVC Words
Practice reading short /a/ CVC words with this set of 6 tic-tac-toe games.
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Letter Craft Activity - 'U' is For Umbrella
An activity to assist young students with letter recognition, phonological awareness, and fine motor development.
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Letter Match-Up Cards
A set of uppercase and lowercase letter cards.
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Classroom Spinner Template - CVC Words
A classroom spinner template focusing on CVC words.
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Beginning Sound Dominoes
Apply letter-sound correspondence and beginning word sounds with this set of 52 letter and picture dominoes.
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SMASH IT! Beginning Sounds
Practice applying beginning letter sound correspondence with this set of 16 game boards and letter cards.
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CVC Word Dominoes
Practice decoding and spelling CVC words with this set of 30 dominoes.
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CVCC Word Dominoes
Practice decoding and spelling CVCC words with this set of 28 dominoes.
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CCVC Word Dominoes
Practice decoding and spelling CCVC words with this set of 28 dominoes.
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FIND IT! Long and Short Vowels - Task Cards
Practice distinguishing between short vowel sounds and long vowel sounds with this set of 16 task cards.
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Color by Letters (s,a,t,p,i,n) - Chicken
A color by letter activity for students to practice letter recognition.
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Letter Craft Activity - 'T' is For Toucan
An activity to assist young students with letter recognition, phonological awareness, and fine motor development.