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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Sweet Sight Words Worksheet - What
Practice reading, writing, and identifying the high-frequency word “what” from the Kindergarten-level Dolch sight words list.
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Alphabetical Order Scoot
Put words in alphabetical order with this 24-card movement activity for your whole class or small group.
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Sight Word Hunt - Dolch Pre-Primer
Practice reading high frequency words by sight with a set of 6 Dolch Pre-Primer Sight Words game boards.
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Move It! - Long and Short Vowel 'I' PowerPoint Game
An active PowerPoint game to practice reading and identifying long and short vowel ‘i’ words.
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Primary Weekly Poetry Guide - Weeks 4 and 5
Use this weekly poetry guide to celebrate National Poetry Month in your primary classroom.
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FIND IT! Long and Short Vowels - Task Cards
Practice distinguishing between short vowel sounds and long vowel sounds with this set of 16 task cards.
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BUILD IT! CVC, CCVC, and CVCC Words
Encourage your students to practice decoding and spelling CVC, CCVC, and CVCC words with this set of 15 task cards.
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Primary Weekly Poetry Guide - Week 2
Use this weekly poetry guide to celebrate National Poetry Month in your primary classroom.
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Initial Sound Clip Cards (Version 2)
A hands-on activity to practice initial sounds.
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My Little Sight Word Book - He
A little book with activities for the sight word ‘he’.
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My Little Sight Word Book - One
A little book of activities for the sight word ‘one’.
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Initial Sound Clip Cards (Version 1)
A hands-on activity to practice initial sounds.
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Sweet Sight Words Worksheet - WHY
Practice reading, writing, and identifying the high-frequency word “why” from the Second Grade Dolch sight words list.
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Sweet Sight Words Worksheet - AN
Practice reading, writing, and identifying the high-frequency word “an” from the First Grade Dolch sight words list.
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Sweet Sight Words Worksheet - HIS
Practice reading, writing, and identifying the high-frequency word “his” from the First Grade Dolch sight words list.
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Science of Reading Decoding Strategy Bookmarks and Poster
Help students succeed in reading fluency with this free printable bookmark and poster set of strategies for decoding unknown words.
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Sweet Sight Words Worksheet - FROM
Practice reading, writing, and identifying the high-frequency word “from” from the First Grade Dolch sight words list.
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Sweet Sight Words Worksheet - WE
Practice reading, writing, and identifying the high-frequency word “we” 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 - CAN
Practice reading, writing, and identifying the high-frequency word “can” from the Pre-Primer Dolch sight words list.
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Sweet Sight Words Worksheet - COME
Practice reading, writing, and identifying the high-frequency word “come” 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 - TWO
Practice reading, writing, and identifying the high-frequency word “two” from the Pre-Primer Dolch sight words list.
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Initial Sounds Worksheet
A worksheet to practice beginning sounds.
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Dolch Word Fishy Find – Game
A fishing game for students to review Dolch sight words.
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Oxford Wordlist Mats - Words 1 to 354
A set of Oxford wordlist mats to assist students with their reading and spelling.
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Phonics Flashcards and Progress Tracker - Scooter Theme
A set of CVC, CCVC, and CVCC word flashcards in a scooter theme with an accompanying scooter ramp to track student progress.
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Phonics Assessment - Long and Short Vowel Sound
Test your students' long and short vowel sound knowledge with this phonics assessment kit.
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Phonics Assessment - Uppercase and Lowercase Letters
Test your students' knowledge of the uppercase and lowercase letters in the alphabet with this assessment kit.
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Missing Beginnings Worksheet
A worksheet to consolidate initial blend sounds.
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Writing Lowercase Letters
Students practice writing the lowercase letter next to the provided uppercase letter.
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CVC Beginning and Ending Letters Worksheet Pack
Practice identifying missing beginning and ending sounds and letters in this set of 10 CVC worksheets.