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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FIND IT! S Blends Board Game
Practice decoding and spelling words with this board game that focuses on S consonant blends.
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FIND IT! L Blends Board Game
Practice decoding and spelling words with this board game that focuses on L consonant blends.
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Alphabet Letter Match
A fun match-up activity to consolidate your students' knowledge of uppercase and lowercase letters.
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Vowel Sounds Sort - /a/ and /e/
Practice distinguishing between long and short vowel sounds for letters /a/ and /e/ by sorting this set of 24 picture cards into categories.
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Sweet Sight Words Worksheet - WRITE
Practice reading, writing, and identifying the high-frequency word “write” from the Second Grade Dolch sight words list.
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Sweet Sight Words Worksheet - THANK
Practice reading, writing, and identifying the high-frequency word “thank” from the First Grade Dolch sight words list. Perfect Thanksgiving resource!
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Sweet Sight Words Worksheet - WALK
Practice reading, writing, and identifying the high-frequency word “walk” from the First Grade Dolch sight words list.
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Sweet Sight Words Worksheet - HAD
Practice reading, writing, and identifying the high-frequency word “had” from the First Grade Dolch sight words list.
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Sweet Sight Words Worksheet - HER
Practice reading, writing, and identifying the high-frequency word “her” from the First Grade Dolch sight words list.
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Sweet Sight Words Worksheet - AND
Practice reading, writing, and identifying the high-frequency word “and” from the Pre-Primer Dolch sight words list.
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Sweet Sight Words Worksheet - TO
Practice reading, writing, and identifying the high-frequency word “to” from the Pre-Primer Dolch sight words list.
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Sweet Sight Words Worksheet - LITTLE
Practice reading, writing, and identifying the high-frequency word “little” from the Pre-Primer Dolch sight words list.
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Sweet Sight Words Worksheet - AFTER
Practice reading, writing, and identifying the high-frequency word “after” from the First Grade Dolch sight words list.
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Sweet Sight Words Worksheet - YOU
Practice reading, writing, and identifying the high-frequency word “you” from the Pre-Primer Dolch sight words list.
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Roll it! Read it! Write it! Dolch 1st Grade Sight Words
Practice reading and writing Dolch’s first grade high-frequency words with this board game for multiple players.
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Roll it! Read it! Write it! Dolch Pre-Primer Sight Words
Practice reading and writing Dolch’s pre-primer high-frequency words with this board game for multiple players.
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Sweet Sight Words Worksheet - THE
Practice reading, writing, and identifying the high-frequency word “the” from the Pre-Primer Dolch sight words list.
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Final e Board Game - A_E
Practice decoding final -e conventions for representing the long 'a' vowel sound with our board game and set of word cards.
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Initial Sounds Worksheet
A worksheet to practice beginning sounds.
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Four In A Row Vowel Teams Game — EE, EA, and EY
Decode words with EE, EA, and EY vowel teams representing the long 'e' vowel sound.
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Long and Short Vowel Sounds Board Game
Practice distinguishing between long and short vowel sounds with this set of 36 picture cards and vowel sound game board.
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Four in a Row Game - a_e Words
Practice decoding long 'a' silent final ‘e’ words with this set of 18 word cards and picture game board.
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Spelling Suffixes Anchor Charts - Plurals
Help students understand when to apply the right plural spellings based on the ending of any word.
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Finger Twist Up - Phonics Game
A fun, engaging board game to consolidate students' understanding of blends and sounds.
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Alphabetical Order Activity
A fun matchup activity to help teach children the letters of the alphabet and their sounds.
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Digraph Bug Swatting Game
Practice digraph knowledge at the start of words with this small group bug swatting game.
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Digraph Road Trip Board Game
A transport themed phonics board game that explores common digraphs.
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Generic Spelling Activity Worksheet Pack
A set of 6 generic spelling activity worksheets that can be used with any spelling list.
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Word Tile Total Activity - Uppercase
A fun activity that encourages students to think mathematically while developing their spelling skills.
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Word Twist - Word Building Game
Encourage word building in your classroom with this fun Boggle-style game!
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Blends PowerPoint
A 21-slide PowerPoint presentation on different blends.
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Ninja Race Phonics Game
A fun, engaging board game to consolidate students' understanding of digraphs and rhyme.