Phonics Anchor Chart

I cannot tell a lie  - I love anchor charts.  No, I REALLY love anchor charts.  I am a visual person, and I think most kids like to see their learning on display as well.   Anchor charts also help me look good, because they remind me of what's what! 

It was actually fun (really?) to study vowel pairs, vowel digraphs, and diphthongs.  I'm not kidding!  I combed through their book to make this chart in order to put all of the information onto one chart.  We had this chart up for 2 weeks and referred to it during each lesson.  One day, we had to identify the long a sound in words and the kiddos were thrown for a loop when there were no vowel pair words.  I pointed to the chart and asked them which sound also makes the long a sound?  The lightbulbs went off in their little brains when they looked at the "ei" vowel digraph.  Gotta love those charts!!!!!  And bonus: they all performed excellently on their phonics test!  :)

Gotta love a prefix and suffix!!

I've been completely enjoying my time in 3rd grade.  The kids are a scream!  I've been making anchor charts for them because I'm a visual learner.  I like to see in print what I am learning.  So, I just assume these kids can also benefit - hence the love of anchor charts.  I'm literally obsessed with pinning them on my Pinterest account.  Anyhow, here's my recent anchor chart for our prefix and suffix lessons coming up:

As you can see, I sorta ran out of room with all those suffixes, but it's better in person.  It's just a teaching tool....basically so I don't have to keep writing these things on the board each and every day!  I know my Phonics chart made a real difference with the kiddos, and that's all the proof I need!  It was so handy to scaffold the information from lesson to lesson, and class to class.  Frankly, anchor charts make me feel smarter and also make me look good...Why?   Because all I have to do to remind myself of the answer is LOOK AT THE CHART!  It's all about making things easier for the teacher.  At least, that's what I'm discovering each and every day.

Vowel Flower Activity

Well, I've been figuring out how to upload documents to a blog.  Good grief, but it's ridiculous!  Hopefully now I am all ready to go (fingers crossed)!  It's funny how a person can take so much time tweaking a bit of clip art because the print preview shows everything all weird.....

Anyhow, here is an activity from a beginning reader unit I created for Kindergarteners.  For complete directions, click on the Vowel Flower Activity.  The Vowel Flower Activity is for students who have just learned their short vowel sounds are are getting ready to read CVC words. 

The "A,E,I,O,and U" vowels are each placed onto a separate flower center:

After you have taped them to the white board or stapled them permanently onto a bulletin board, give each child some "CVC flower petals" and have fun!  Don't create the flower petals to match the colors of the vowel centers.  Just make them all white or random colors.  If there is a color pattern, the kids will notice that and forget paying attention to the vowel sounds!!! (they are so smart!)

Here is an example of the "E" flower:

Here are the empty letter examples:

A variation on the theme is to write the CVC words without the vowel.  The kids have to think harder, but don't forget that CVC words can become different words when the vowel is replaced by another vowel!  Here is an example of this:

This activity could become a center when you are finished.  The kids could also help you come up with more and more words. You could use this as a semi-permanent display to review the word worm periodically (see post below). 

Bye!