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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Dolch Word Fishy Find – Game
A fishing game for students to review Dolch sight words.
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Uppercase and Lowercase Matching
A set of 4 pages for practicing uppercase and lowercase letter recognition.
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Fry Sight Words Flash Cards
A set of flash cards for the first 100 Fry Sight Words.
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Conversation Hearts - Template
Turn this set of 18 conversation heart templates into a variety of teaching resources leading up to Valentine's Day.
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Who Is Rosa Parks? – Shared Reading and Activity
Learn about and discuss activist Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott with this 15-slide read-along PowerPoint presentation.
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Initial R Blend Cards
A resource to help students identify the R blend at the beginning of a word.
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Letter Confusion Worksheets
A set of 10 worksheets for students struggling with dyslexia and letter confusion.
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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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Alphabet Cards, Picture Cards, and Activity Ideas
A set of alphabet and picture cards and a list of activities for how to use them.
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Phonics Flashcards and Progress Tracker - Skateboard Theme
A set of CVC, CCVC, and CVCC word flashcards in a skateboard theme with an accompanying skateboard ramp to monitor student progress.
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Science of Reading Strategy Classroom Posters
Posters to remind your students of the different reading strategies.
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A-Z Picture Flashcards (Lowercase)
A set of A-Z flash cards with lower case letters and matching pictures.
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Missing Letter Alphabet Cards
A resource to help students identify the first letter of each word.
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Alphabet Matching Caterpillar Activity
A vibrant and fun activity to teach lowercase and uppercase to young children.
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L Blends Worksheet
A worksheet consolidating the initial L blend sound.
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R-Blends Blending Flashcards
Practice blending r-blends with this set of blending r word cards.
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Cr Blend Flashcards
Twenty-three flashcards showing cr blend words and pictures.
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Writing Lowercase Letters
Students practice writing the lowercase letter next to the provided uppercase letter.
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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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Letter Zz - Alphabet Worksheet
An activity worksheet to use in the classroom when learning about phonics and the letter Z.
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Letter Yy - Alphabet Worksheet
An activity worksheet to use in the classroom when learning about phonics and the letter Y.
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Letter Xx - Alphabet Worksheet
An activity worksheet to use in the classroom when learning about phonics and the letter X.
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Letter Ww - Alphabet Worksheet
An activity worksheet to use in the classroom when learning about phonics and the letter W.
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Letter Vv - Alphabet Worksheet
An activity worksheet to use in the classroom when learning about phonics and the letter V.
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Letter Uu - Alphabet Worksheet
An activity worksheet to use in the classroom when learning about phonics and the letter U.
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Letter Tt - Alphabet Worksheet
An activity worksheet to use in the classroom when learning about phonics and the letter T.
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Letter Rr - Alphabet Worksheet
An activity worksheet to use in the classroom when learning about phonics and the letter R.
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Letter Ss - Alphabet Worksheet
An activity worksheet to use in the classroom when learning about phonics and the letter S.
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Letter Qq - Alphabet Worksheet
An activity worksheet to use in the classroom when learning about phonics and the letter Q.
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Letter Pp - Alphabet Worksheet
An activity worksheet to use in the classroom when learning about phonics and the letter P.
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Letter Kk - Alphabet Worksheet
An activity worksheet to use in the classroom when learning about phonics and the letter K.
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Letter Oo - Alphabet Worksheet
An activity worksheet to use in the classroom when learning about phonics and the letter O.