More Tricks for Sounding Out CVC Words

We practice sounding out words every day as whole group
on this pocket chart from ReallyGoodStuff.com

In November, I posted a blog entry on teaching children to sound out CVC (Consonant-Vowel-Consonant) words.  And like most Kindergarten classes, we are still working on mastering that skill.  While most of my kids are doing fairly well with this, there are still a few little ones that are struggling to figure out how to blend sounds together.  These are mostly the younger ones with the fall birthdays, so it is really not their fault at all, poor babies!  But, the California State Standards were written for everybody- no matter when their birthdays fall- and so I am responsible for teaching all of them to sound out CVC words.  It doesn’t matter if English is not their first language, or if they only just barely turned five years old at the end of November.  It doesn't matter if on top of that they were born prematurely, or may have a learning disability, or have any number of other problems you can imagine.  It makes no difference if their parents are uninvolved in their schooling or if their attendance is poor.  (Thankfully, this describes very few of my students!)  None of those things matter, except that I am responsible to make sure that everyone meets all of the state standards, to the best of their ability and my ability to teach them.   So here are some of the things that we have been doing in our little after school tutoring group to help build up their phonemic awareness and therefore get them closer and closer to being able to sound out CVC words.

Phonemic awareness forms the foundation for language arts in general, but especially for sounding out words.  So when I have trouble getting kids to sound out words, I always remind myself to back up and see where they have fallen short on their journey to become readers.  All of the bricks (skills) in the foundation must be in place if they are going to be able to sound out words.  If they are having trouble, then there must be something missing.  So what is it?  I try to identify the gaps and see if I can fill them in.

Phonemic Awareness Skills Progression:
1.  Blending parts of compound words
(play + ground = playground)
2.  Blending initial sound to rest of word in longer words
(/m/ + arshmallow = marshmallow)
3.  Blending initial sound to rimes in shorter words
(/m/ + at = mat)
4.  Blending 3 phonemes/sounds in context
("I like to /r/ + /u/ + /n/" =
"I like to run.")
5.  Blending 3 phonemes
(out of context)
(/b/ + /a/ + /t/ = bat)

The natural progression after this step is that if a child knows the letter sounds, he would then be able to say the letter sounds him or herself and then sound out the words.  The activities below are based on this progression of phonemic awareness skills, and the idea that once they master each of the preliminary skills, they should then be able to sound out words- with a little practice, anyway! The only difference between these activities and any other phonemic awareness activities is that I am doing them with the very same sounds and words that I am trying to teach them to read, rather than any random sounds or words that I might pull out of the air.  This is VERY important!  For example, since I might be ultimately trying to teach them to read the word "fat," I would work on blending just the /f/ and the /a/ sound in the first activity below.  Then, if I am also working on the word "sat," then I would have them blend the sounds /s/ and /a/ in the first activity below, etc.

1.  Guess My Silly Sound
For this activity, I simply took any two sounds, such as /fffff/ and /aaaaa/ and said them out loud.  Then I called on a child to blend them together to make a funny sound, which in this case would be “fa.”  For some reason, my students this year find it easier to blend the words together if the vowel comes first and the consonant comes last. 

2.  Guess My Secret Word

This is my CVC book.
You can also get it on a disk, which gets you
the printable CVC bingo games with it, too!

For this activity, I just took the CVC flash cards from the unit in my CVC book that we are working on at the moment and just read each child the sounds from each card.  I simply told each child the sounds of each word without showing them the letters, and asked them to blend the sounds together to make a word.  If they didn’t get it, I started giving them contextual clues.  For example, if the word was “dig,” then I might say, “This is something a naughty dog does in the garden.”   If the word was “pig,” I might say, “This is a farm animal that loves the mud.” I've attached a sample of the "at" word family flashcards from this set for you to try.



3.  Stretch Out the Word
The goal of this activity is to get the children to be aware of every sound in the word; (hence the term “phonemic awareness.”)  For this activity, I have the children put their hands up in front of them and show me how they are going to stretch out their words.  Then we pretend to stretch out some rubber, stretchy snakes as we pull the sounds of the words apart.  I say, “Say ‘fat.”  Sound ‘fat.”  Then the children begin to pull on their imaginary rubber snakes until we have isolated all of the sounds in the word.  After we have done this for a few words, then I pass out some REAL stretchy snakes, and let them try it with some real ones!  The kids LOVE this, and when we have stretched out our CVC words, I let them play with the rubbery snakes a little bit. 

4.  Build the Word with "CVC Pockets"

For this activity, I have the children take one of our new CVC pockets and pull the letters out of the envelope.  Then they have to try to put them in the correct order that they go in.  So for the word “lip,” we would not want to see the p coming first, etc.  They have to think about each sound and where it should go when putting it back together.  Then they have to try to read the word to me!


5.  Write the Word and Sound It Out By Pushing Up Chips
I learned this gem of a trick from my new friend, Janice Lawson, who is a retired Kindergarten teacher that has come to volunteer in my room one day a week!  I asked her if she would work with a couple of my students that were struggling with sounding out words, and she pulled out this activity from her bag of tricks that she used when she taught Kindergarten in Baldwin Park, CA.

This is Janice's board for sounding out CVC words!

She said that she felt that it was important for the children to write the words that they were going to practice reading themselves, to help them better focus on the letters.  Then she asked me for some blocks or chips to use as markers, and had the children push them up as they said the sounds, one block at a time.  Then they pushed the blocks together and tried to blend the sounds together as they did it.  For my two lowest little ones, this really unlocked the secret of sounding out words!  She said that they needed the kinesthetic element to help them remember and focus on the sounds.  She also mentioned that the chips had to be something very boring, or the children (especially the boys!) would just play with them.  She usually used poker chips.

This is my paper and the blocks that I used to sound out words with the kids.

I was so excited to see that something was actually working for these two little students, because I had been trying absolutely everything I could think of, and getting practically no where!  So during after school tutoring, we tried it again!  I handed out white boards to the group and had them all write a word.  Then we put the blocks on the boards and pushed one block up on each letter for each sound as we said it.  Then we pushed the blocks together to sound out the word.  All of the children responded very well to this!  The only problem was that it resulted in an erased word on the white board!  So we put away the white boards and switched to paper and pencil and started over.  We did one word together, and then did a second word.  After our first word, we went back and read the first one again, using the blocks as before.  Then we did a third word, and went back and reread the first two words again with the blocks, etc.  We did several words, but each time we finished a word, we went back and reviewed the previous words.

This is what one of my student's paper's looked like.  You can see how difficult it was for them to get the words spaced out correctly and the letters written legibly.

At the end of the session, I asked the children to read the words to me individually, without the blocks.  All of them could do it, except for my two lowest children that I had my friend Janice work with.  So I got out the blocks and let them try it again with the blocks.  Guess what?  THEY DID IT!  I was THRILLED!  They have sounded out a few words for me before, but they have been mostly words that they have memorized- not truly sounded out.  So this is wonderful news!  Hats off to Janice and her great ideas!  I can’t wait to learn more from her!

I decided that to make this a little easier next time, I’m going to make up a printable with some blank boxes for the children to write their letters in.  I’m also going to number them, so that when I ask the children to read the first or second word, we all know which one to read!  The children were writing their words all over their papers and it was hard to keep them all on the same word at the same time.  Some of them also were making their letters too small and too close together for the blocks, and I think that putting one letter in each box will solve a lot of these problems.  If you would like a copy of this printable, click here.

Of course, the idea of pushing chips into boxes for each sound is not a new one; these boxes are known as Elkonin boxes.  But I have never thought of using them with letters inside of them; I have only thought of using them as blank place holders to represent a sound in a word.  In this case, the letters are written down, and the child moves the chip on top of the letter while saying the sound, so it is slightly different than the original idea of Elkonin boxes as I understand them.

6.  Read the Word and Match It to the Picture
Finally, I have the children try to read me the CVC word by sounding it out.  No guessing allowed-they MUST sound it out!  Then they come up to the pocket chart and find the picture that matches their word. 

The pocket chart with flash cards from my CVC book.

7.  Reading CVC Nonsense Words
When the children get more proficient at this, I am definitely going to introduce them to the concept of reading nonsense words!  I know that, at the moment, they are trying to make sense of what they are reading, and that is good.  But I do think that in order to develop some good, solid phonics skills, they will need to be able to decode nonsense words.  This is because when a child attempts to decode a longer, multisyllabic word, each syllable inside of it is essentially a nonsense word- and that’s why nonsense words are important.  I use the Word Blending Pocket Chart pictured below from ReallyGoodStuff.com.

A Draw and Tell Story

I had an absolutely wonderful time last weekend at the California Kindergarten Association!  I got to meet so many wonderful people, including Dr. Jean, Fran Kramer from the Kindergarten Crayons, and Cindy Vance from For the Love of Kindergarten, Camille from An Open Door,   Kat from Kindergarten Cowgirl.  Also in our group were Stacy and Jennifer, who both teach Kindergarten, but do not blog- yet, LOL!  We all went to dinner together and chatted up a storm like old friends.  It was great fun for us, though probably not so much fun for the rest of the people in the restaurant, I'll bet!  (I'm sure we were WAY too loud!)  
In any case, the entire weekend was very special and fun for me, since I got to meet so many people that are dedicated "HeidiSongs Fans" and so many stopped by to tell me how much they like my work and appreciate what we have done to help children.  It really made me feel great, and it was just what I needed!  So by the time we made it home late Sunday night, I was very tired but happy.  :)


Don't forget about our video and picture contest!  
Hey, everybody!  YOU can win free stuff from HeidiSongs just by sending in some videos or photos of your students OR your own kids using HeidiSongs products!  I would especially love to see a video of some special needs students singing some HeidiSongs, if anyone has any! More details are HERE!

Prizes Include:
–– 1 Grand Prize:
* $100 credit toward your choice of any HeidiSongs product*
–– 5 Honorary Mention Prizes:
* Any CD, DVD or resource from the HeidiSongs catalog, up to $20 credit toward any product*


 A Draw and Tell Story:  The Curious Little Mouse
I have been wanting to write a “Draw and Tell” story for quite a while and share it on my blog, but the thing that has been holding me back is the need to break the artwork for the story down into tiny steps and save each one as a separate step.  That takes a while!  I also wanted this story to be seasonally appropriate, but not holiday oriented so that everyone might be able to use it.  I keep hearing from teachers that are unable to use any lesson plans that have a connection to a holiday, etc.  My school doesn’t have any such restrictions (at least not so far!)  Nobody really seems to care or object if the children make a Santa project or a candy cane.  BUT, I do feel bad for those of you that teach in places where that is a no-no.  So, with that in mind, I created a story about a mouse and a snowman.  Hopefully, nobody has found a reason to object to a mouse or a snowman, other than the fact that they may be a little too cute or a little too much fun.  If your administration objects to things that appear to be even a little remotely cute or fun, then when you get to the face on your snowman, draw a straight line instead of a smile, and maybe that will appease the powers that be, ha ha!  Then ask a lot of higher level thinking questions at the end of the story.  That’s always a good idea anyway, right?  If you would like to download this story, click here.  


To tell this Draw and Tell story, this is what you need:

1.  A large piece of white paper, or a white board easel.
2.  A marker.
3.  The downloadable story.
4.  Some kids to listen.  That’s it!

I always start by telling them that my story is going to create a picture, and if they guess what my picture is before the end of the story, they will need to keep it a secret and don’t tell their friends, because they might spoil the surprise for somebody else.  We don’t tell everyone what is inside a Christmas present, right?  It’s better when it’s a big surprise!  Then, each time you tell part of the story, you draw a part of the picture.  All you have to do with my story is copy the part of the picture that is printed in red.  My story forms a snowman in the end, which is supposed to be a big surprise.
Of course, two minutes into it, one little boy interrupted my story and yelled out, it looks like a snowman!  I don’t know how he could have gotten that from two little squares on a white board, but he did!  (It's possible he saw my paper on the clipboard.)  Luckily, I just shushed him, the class ignored him, and the children of course enjoyed the story anyway, despite the spoiler.



It’s best to practice telling the story once on your own without the kids, just to make sure you know what to do.  You’ll also tell it more fluently and draw the pictures a little bit better if you have done it before.  But the children won’t care if it looks rather childish.  They will LOVE it!  I find that children are usually MESMERIZED when I tell a Draw and Tell story!

I have told lots of them in the past; just never one that I have written myself.  In fact, there are whole books full of them.  One of my favorites is a Book by Richard Thompson, called Draw-And-Tell: Reading - Writing - Listening - Speaking - Viewing - Shaping.  You can find used copies on Amazon.  You just have to figure out ahead of time how each picture and story goes, because they are a bit more complicated than mine.  Happy teaching!

A Brand New HeidiSongs Book!

It's my brand new full color picture book!

Well, I’m now at the California Kindergarten Association Conference, and I am so excited to present this afternoon!  I flew in from Dallas last night, arriving just in time to catch a glimpse of their wonderful art children's art display.  I sent in two art projects that I saved from my class last year, and here they are:



I had a wonderful day meeting with the teachers at the Lamb of God Preschool on Friday, who are just about the nicest group of teachers I have ever worked with!  If any of you got a better picture than the one I got below, please send it to me!  Mine didn't focus very well.
Then I had a quick flight out of town into the San Fransisco International Airport.  Whew!  Busy, busy, busy!  But not too busy to tell you about some things that are happening this week!

The Lamb of God Preschool Staff and Heidi (Front and Center)

First of all, our new website has my first full color story book on it, called Alphabet Action!  I can’t tell you how excited I am to finally have this accomplished!  Some of you may remember seeing me post a little about this process on my HeidiSongs Facebook page.  Having never published a story book before, it was an interesting process for me to go through.  Luckily for me, my husband used to work in the publishing business, (though he was creating catalogs and other products, not little books), so he is knowledgeable about how to go about this sort of thing.

My book is now in our school library!

As you might guess from the title, my book is based on the song, Alphabet Action, that can be found on the Singable Songs for Letters and Sounds CD and DVD, and also as a “Bonus Track” on my Musical Math CD and DVD.  My husband found a wonderful illustrator to work with named Amanda Sorensen, came up with a contract, and together we generated ideas of what each page might look like.  These ideas were emailed to Amanda, who then sketched out a couple of ideas for each page and emailed them to us for approval and to make a choice between one or another before proceeding.  When we had a concept for each page that we all were happy with, she then completed the page and sent it back again for approval.



Last fall, I posted some pictures on my Facebook page of the proofs that the printer ran for us (larger than posters!) These showed multiple pages on a couple of very large sheets of paper, and were given to us by the printer for our approval, of course.  After we were (very) sure that there were no mistakes in the book at all, we gave the thumbs up for printing!  When the books were finally printed and we received the first box full, it was SO exciting to see a full color book with my picture on the back of it, and my name on the front as the author!  It feels just GREAT!

So I took the book to school last fall, and read it to my kids.  They were just thrilled to see my picture on the back, and they loved to read the story!  It makes a really wonderful listening center to use with the CD!  We also sang it and read it along as a class while we danced along with the CD, too.  It’s now in our classroom book center, but I’m planning on getting it out again this spring when the children do a little bit more with publishing their own little books.  I was thinking of printing out some extra little pictures of the children, sitting at tables and getting ready to write with a pencil, etc.  Then we could glue their own “author pictures” on their books, too!  I think that it would be extra meaningful for them, considering that they have all seen my picture on the back of the Alphabet Action book now, too!  And now here is another story that I have written for you to try out in your classroom, if you like!

An Experiment with Candles, and Lessons About Fire, Plus a new Video Contest!

Ah, vacation is lovely!  This extra week of being on vacation is as nice as that extra week of being in school right before Christmas was hard- if that makes any sense at all!  I am soaking it all in, because January is absolutely filled to the brim with lots of great teaching activities in the classroom, plus conferences to go to as well!  Next week on Friday, I will be doing an on-site training at a preschool in the Dallas area.  So here's a shout out to the Lamb of God Early Childhood Ministry in Flower Mound, Texas!  I can't wait to meet you all!  Then I am flying (lickity split!) from Dallas to San Francisco that evening so that I can present at the California Kindergarten Conference in Santa Clara, CA!  My husband will pick me up at the airport, and I will be doing two presentations there on Saturday afternoon.  If any of you would like to attend, I will be presenting "Developmentally Appropriate Ways to Get Kids Writing," and also on teaching kids the alphabet with my Singable Songs for Letters and Sounds CD/DVD.  
At the end of this month, I will be presenting in Addison, TX, at SDE's Conference for Texas Kindergarten and Pre-K Teachers, and then at SDE's Conference for Mississippi Kindergarten Teachers!  For a full list of all of the conferences that I will be presenting at this year, please click here.  There are a bunch!  And did you know that I do staff development presentations for individual districts, as well as at educational conferences?  I would love to come to YOUR district and meet YOU!

So now I am going to tell you about some experiments that we did with candles during that last week in school before Christmas vacation.

I always like to read a fiction book to launch a discussion in science whenever possible, just as a means to pique their interest.  And this time, I used the book, The Legend of the Poinsettia by Tomie de Paola.  I usually use this book to introduce the poinsettia and then do a poinsettia craft, but this time I used it to launch a discussion of candles and fire, since there are lots of images of candles in this book.

I got the idea for the first experiment from Pinterest!  There are SO many great ideas to be found there!  So I recreated this experiment to show children what fire needs in order to burn.  The idea is that children should learn that fire needs heat, air, and fuel, and without any one of these elements, it will go out.

All you need are some birthday candles, something to hold them up, such as modeling clay or "Floam," and a lighter.  You'll also need a pair of scissors to cut one of the candles down to the end, otherwise you'll have to let your class sit and watch for a good long time while that last candle burns completely out!  I cut mine down to about half an inch, and even that took a good four minutes to burn completely out, so if your class' attention span is short, then cut it the shorter the better!  Then get a glass jar and remove the label so that everyone can see what is happening inside of it, and a glass of water.  Also, be sure to keep a fire extinguisher and a bowl of water handy, just to be on the safe side!

Start by making sure that your students know that this is not a game and that they must NEVER play with matches or fire.  This is about how to put OUT a fire, and why "Stop, Drop, and Roll" works.  Light all three candles.  And then...

Place the glass jar over the top of the first candle and watch the flame go out.  Ask the children why it went out.  Hopefully they will guess that it ran out of air!

Then pour a cup of water on the second candle and watch it go out.  Ask the children why it went out, and hopefully they will guess that it had no heat!  (You could also argue that we took away the air for a moment, but I guess that's debatable!)

Then let that last candle burn down to nothing.  It should be pretty obvious to the children why it went out; there was nothing left to burn!  The only thing my class lacked was the word "fuel" and a way to describe what had happened.  "Fire needs fuel in order to burn.  If you take away the fuel, it cannot burn."  

All of this will be leading to a discussion that we will be having in January about why "Stop, Drop, and Roll" works:  if your clothes catch on fire, when you roll yourself around and around, you are taking away the fire's air, and it needs air in order to burn.  Makes sense, doesn't it?  I think that once kids understand this principle, they will be far more likely to remember to do, and should be safer, at least in theory!

Here's a quick video of our experiment.  I cannot show you the one we did in our classroom, due to district rules, but I can tell you that the children were entirely fascinated and absolutely LOVED it!  Some of them loved the experiment so much that they wanted to repeat it over and over again during their playtime, which we did, with my supervision, of course!

Pin me to Pinterest!

HeidiSongs Sing-Along Video & Photo Contest

Submit a video or photo of your students singing one of their  favorite HeidiSongs songs or working with one of their favorite HeidiSongs activities... and win some cool stuff  for the whole class to enjoy!

Well we're doing it again.... this time were adding photos so everyone can participate! It's so easy, and there is plenty of good stuff to win, I hope everyone will get in on the fun!

Here's how to enter:
1: Check with your parents and principal to see if there are any issues with shooting and posting the students' likenesses to an educational blog. My parents get a kick out of seeing their kids on our website, but sometimes you'll get a parent who is "undecided" about media issues like this, and it's best to involve them in another activity during this time.

2: Have your class choose their favorite Heidisongs song or activity, then pull out your digital camera, digital video camera or even a cell phone, any device that lets you post or email easily. If you're shooting video, be sure to use a tripod or brace yourself well, since many of these devices don't handle motion very well, and we want to see your classroom at it's best!

3: Send us the file with the following information: Your name, your school, and the state your in, plus an email address that we can contact you with. If the file size is larger than about 1-2 mb, we use a service called MailBigFile (http://free.mailbigfile.com/) to easily send larger files up to 200mb, then send them to contest@heidisongs.com. If you have any questions, just drop us a line at the same address and we'll help in any way possible.

That's all we'll need. We'll announce the winners in early March. The Winners may even get a spot in one of Heidi's presentations this year or a featured location on the website, showing off just how great your class is!

Prizes Include:
–– 1 Grand Prize:
* $100 credit toward your choice of any HeidiSongs product*
–– at least 5 Honorary Mention Prizes:
* Any CD, DVD or resource from the HeidiSongs catalog, up to $20 credit toward any product*

Eligibility
Contest open to legal residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia, 18 years or older.

Contest Runs From January 1st, 2012 to February 29, 2012, so get those cameras running!

Officials Rules are available here.

Special thanks to Julie Durocher's Kindergarten class at Memorial Elementary School (Yellow Song), and Mary Gregory Family Child Care (Go Song).