Why I chose this Phonics Activity
I chose the activity “Word Stars” to aid my students in a phonics lesson. As a child, I remember
struggling with the vowel-r combination words. To help my students avoid the same struggle, I
chose this activity in which the students use magnets on a baking sheet to create vowel-r words
(e.g., hurt, star, dirt, etc). The students then write down the words that they have made on a sheet
of paper until all of the stars have been filled in with words they have spelled. Roe, Smith, and
Kolodziej (2019) state in their book that “Phonics techniques help students recognize words that
they understand in oral form. (2019, p. 142). With so many words that have a “r” sound that
sound very similar, this will be a great activity for students to differentiate the various sounds.
Why I chose this Fluency Activity
The reason I chose the fluency activity, “Word Family Zoom” is because this is a way for
students to compete without competing with each other. They will compare their scores to their
scores from previous rounds. In the textbook, it says that “Game situations in which children
cooperate or in which they compete with their own previous records rather than with one another
are often more acceptable” than those in which students compete against each other (Roe, Smith,
& Kolodziej, 2019, p. 142). This is also a great activity for students because the students track
each other. There is a small element of teamwork and a large hand in peer review.
