It happens to the best of us: we pick up our phone for “just one minute” to scroll through Pinterest for review activities. Before we know it, it’s lunchtime and we’ve spent so much time searching that we could have made our own activity in that amount of time. It’s a tough cycle that we’ve all found ourselves in – and I’m here to help you break it!
Engaging Winter Phonics and Fluency Activities
My Winter Phonics and Fluency Activities are just what you need to review all of your phonics skills while celebrating these fun, icy months! No more scrolling through Pinterest trying to find the best phonics activities – these are it! The best part about these Winter Phonics and Fluency Activities is that they cover an array of phonics skills in ways that are fun, fresh, and engaging. And with a cute winter theme throughout the activities, you’ll be feeling festive and – dare I say it – enjoying this chilly time of year!
What’s included? When you snag this amazing resource, you’ll get engaging phonics and fluency activities to review phonics patterns. There are four pages for each phonics pattern: reading words in isolation, reading sentences, reading short stories, and a super fun Roll, Read, Race board game. Phonics patterns included are: CVC words, digraphs, beginning blends, ending blends, added endings, CVCe words, r-controlled vowels, vowel teams, and diphthongs. Do the math, and that’s 36 activities in all! And if you’re like me and begging for spring and warmer months, grab the GROWING Phonics and Fluency Activities Bundle to get spring, end of year/summer, and fall themes, too!
Why do you want this resource? As teachers, our time is tight. One of my goals with my resources is always to make them quick and easy for you to implement seamlessly into your classroom. One of the best aspects about these Winter Phonics Stories is that you can truly just grab them and go. The prep is done for you – all you need to do is have a group of eager students ready to review their phonics skills and show off their knowledge. There’s no need to spend your plan time prepping this resource. With these activities, you can ensure your students are learning and also allow yourself the time to do the many other tasks teachers are called to do.
Another reason you’re going to want this resource in your hands is because it truly helps emergent readers develop the early literacy skills they need in order to become successful, future readers. Throughout these activities, students will focus on phonics, fluency, decoding in isolation and in context, and building their confidence. That’s a lot of areas of practice. But the best thing is that these activities are designed to be fun and engaging instead of overwhelming. Students will practice all of these skills in a way that’s captivating.
Using the Winter Phonics and Fluency Activities in the Classroom
How can you use this resource? These activities are easy for you to grab for a small group or literacy center. It’s always such a challenge to find out exactly how you’re going to use your small group time, and these resources can help you with that. One of the best parts is that they are versatile and can be used in an array of settings. Though they’re great for small group and centers, they’re also appropriate for partner work and whole group instruction. Simply pair up students and they can work through the activities together and play the game board at the end.
For whole group instruction, you can review phonics skills as the teacher rolls one dice and you move through the game board together as a class. And I know – whole group phonics instruction? How effective can that be? Well, it turns out – very! Studies show that whole group phonics instruction is still effective since you’re exposing them to grade level reading, which is important even for struggling readers.
Who can use this resource? It’s always my goal to have my resources to be able to be used in a variety of settings by a variety of educators and students. As with all of my resources, these fun phonics activities can be used by classroom teachers, special educator teachers who have student fluency goals to achieve, reading specialists and interventionists, classroom aides and assistants, parent helpers, parents at home, ESL teachers, tutors, and independent work for kids!
Why is this resource important? Well, I’m glad you asked! There is a strong connection between building accuracy with word decoding as a stepping stone to building fluency skills. Being able to read words in isolation is an essential part in gaining better fluency. With these activities, students are practicing words in isolation, then the words in sentences, and eventually words in short stories. Sharpening these decoding skills will give them the tools they need to become fluent readers.
And why is fluency important? Fluency lends itself to so many components of reading: comprehension and vocabulary, for starters. When students are fluent in their reading, this means they aren’t taking so much time decoding words. This leaves room for their brain to think of other aspects of reading, like learning new words and, most importantly, reading to learn. Steps like these (like the decoding included in these phonics activities) are essential for future fluency. Since these reading components are all connected and build off of one another, activities like the Winter Phonics and Fluency Activities are an important part in the reading process.
So grab them, use them in your classroom with minimal prep, and watch your readers gain the tools they need to become fluent readers!
You can also grab free winter phonics and fluency activities to try these out with your readers, first!
Want more winter fluency activities? Keep engagement up with these winter fluency passages, and more!
