Phonemic Awareness Activities for Early Reading Success (Grades K-2)

Rating:
Summary: Phonics Fun!
Review: A wonderful book filled with fun activities for the K-2 student. Activities in the book include; phoneme discrimination, rhyme and alliteration, oddity task, oral blending, oral segmentation, phonemic manipulation, and linking sound to spelling. What I like best about the book is that each activity offers a suggestion box with ideas to help children who are having difficulty with the activity. Also, the activities are easy to do, do not take much time, and lots of preparation is not needed. I often hear my students say, can we play Higglety, Pigglety, Pop (a game from the book). This is a great book to use with any reading program.

Rating:
Summary: Phonics Fun!
Review: A wonderful book filled with fun activities for the K-2 student. Activities in the book include; phoneme discrimination, rhyme and alliteration, oddity task, oral blending, oral segmentation, phonemic manipulation, and linking sound to spelling. What I like best about the book is that each activity offers a suggestion box with ideas to help children who are having difficulty with the activity. Also, the activities are easy to do, do not take much time, and lots of preparation is not needed. I often hear my students say, can we play Higglety, Pigglety, Pop (a game from the book). This is a great book to use with any reading program.

Rating:
Summary: Not the best source for phonemic awareness activities
Review: Activities are not organized in a developmentally appropriate manner. Does not cover some of the most basic activities to develop awareness of speech sounds (e.g. listening, discriminating) and includes an abundance of activities that would be difficult for children at the pre-reading/early reading level.

Rating:
Summary: A helpful addition to my resource library
Review: I found this book to be very helpful. It is full of fun learning games that target exactly what I need to be teaching at the begining of first grade. The children enjoy the activities and master the skills. A teacher can't ask for more than that!

Rating:
Summary: An excellent resource for new teachers and tutors
Review: I tutor kindergarten students in phonemic awareness and found this book to be an invaluable resource in preparing lessons for the children. While many books tend to emphasize phonics, the children that I tutor cannot yet recognize sounds within words, a necessary pre-requisite to phonics instruction. This book is one of a few that gives specific sound - related activities. One tool that I found to be very helpful is a scope and sequence chart that gives a suggestion as to when to introduce new concepts in phonemic awareness. The book also includes a variety of activities including songs, worksheets, and games that help keep kids actively involved in learning to hear sounds within words. The author also included extra picture cards which can be used to personalize and revise the worksheets and games to keep them fresh and interesting. I recommend this book along with Janiel Wagstaff's Irresistible Sound-Matching Sheets and Lessons that Build Phonemic Awareness, and Jo Fitzpatrick's Phonemic Awareness: Playing with Sounds to Strengthen Beginning Reading Skills to anyone who works with children that need to focus on phonemic awareness, whether tutoring in small groups or in a classroom setting.

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful book to help k-2 teachers introduce phonemics
Review: Scholastics and Wiley Blevins have created a wonderful book that clearly explains the what's and why's of phonemic awareness. After Blevins convinces you that this will lead to reading success, especially for the 20% of students that struggle, he uses the buld of this book to present ready-to-use lesson plans. Also included is a professional bibliography and lists of books that you librarian can provide you for a literacy-based phonemic awareness program. The reseach shows that this is a critical process for problem readers, that reading is not a natural process, that phonics instruction without phonemics of little use. A great, inexpensive book that will have a very measureable effect on our students. Also great for home-schoolers and parents- or anyone tired of the endless phonics vs. whole langu age debate.

Rating:
Summary: An Amazing Resource
Review: This book has been so useful with my inner city first graders. I love it!

Rating:
Summary: Homeschoolers
Review: This book has helped me a lot with homeschooling. Unlike other books of prereading activities I have seen, many of the activities in this book can be done with just a parent and child, even around the dinner table (we are a weird family, I know).

I have also read Blevins other titles, and I particularly enjoyed Phonics A to Z.