Five Creative Ways to Teach Phonics to Students

Use songs and rhymes

Young students love to sing and learn to rhyme. Create fun songs or chants that focus on phonics rules and sounds. There are also lots of resources online that you can search for. Incorporate hand motions or actions to make the learning more interactive and engaging.

Sensory activities

Create hands-on, tactile activities to help children learn phonics. For example, use sand or shaving cream to write letters and words, or create a sensory bin filled with objects that start with certain sounds. Make sure your students speak the sounds as they engage in the activities.

Phonics games

Games are excellent for engaging young learners and make phonics fun. For example, you can create a phonics board game where children have to identify the sound or letter on a card and move their game piece accordingly. Again, you can search online for some phonics game inspiration.

Storytime

During storytime, use the books and stories to teach phonics in context. Choose books that feature repetitive sounds or rhyming words and encourage your children to join in with the story by repeating the words or sounds.

Phonics worksheets

There are lots of learning sites that offer free phonics worksheets. Have your students sound out the phonics as they fill in the worksheets to truly learn the sounds associated with the letters. K5 has a set of phonics worksheets for kindergarten students.

K5 phonics workbooks

In addition to our free kindergarten phonics worksheets, we also sell three phonics workbooks for students in kindergarten to grade 3.