Phonics Fun
More Fun with Phonics
The Most Fun You've Ever Had with Phonics
Wild Times in Phonics Land
A Phonics Fantasy
100
A teaching tool with three boxes used to teach phonemic awareness.
What is an Elkonin box?
100
This refers to a basic speech sound in which the breath is at least partly obstructed and which can be combined with a vowel to form a syllable.
What is a consonant?
100
These are groups of two or three consonants in words that makes a distinct consonant sound, such as "bl" or "spl." Consonant digraphs include bl, br, ch, ck, cl, cr, dr, fl, fr, gh, gl, gr, ng, ph, pl, pr, qu, sc, sh, sk, sl, sm, sn, sp, st, sw, th, tr, tw, wh, wr.
What is a blend? (Or a consonant blend?)
100
This is a syllable that ends with a consonant.
What is a closed syllable? The words fan, am, and left have closed syllables. Multisyllabic words have closed syllables too. For example, a two-syllable word with the vowel-consonant-consonant-vowel pattern may have one or two closed syllables.
100
This is a speech sound that is produced by comparatively open configuration of the vocal tract, with vibration of the vocal cords but without audible friction and is a unit of the sound system of a language that forms the nucleus of a syllable.
What is a vowel?
200
This is a term that describes when two words are joined to form a new word.
What is a compound word?
200
Any of the perceptually distinct units of sound in a specified language that distinguish one word from another, for example p, b, d, and t in the English words pad, pat, bad, and bat.
What is a phoneme?
200
This term refers to the initial phonological unit of any word (e.g. c in cat).
What is an onset?
200
A combination of two letters representing one sound, as in ph and ey.
What is a digraph?
200
This is a type of syllable where nothing comes after the vowel.
What is an open syllable? (As in he.)
300
This refers to the string of letters that follow, usually a vowel and final consonants (e.g. at in cat)
What is a rime?
300
When the letter “r” follows a vowel, it usually effects the vowel sound. The vowel and the /r/ usually stay in the same syllable.
What is an r-controlled vowel?
300
This letter or group of letters is added to the root of a word to change its meaning.
What is an affix?
300
Two (or three) letters that come together to make one sound.
What is a consonant digraph? (Alex Trebek's clarification: The difference between blends and digraphs is that blends are two letters that make two sounds and digraphs make one sound. ch /ch/ tch /ch/).
300
This term refers to a sound formed by the combination of two vowels in a single syllable, in which the sound begins as one vowel and moves toward another (as in coin, loud, and side.)
What is a diphthong?
400
The word bug has this kind of vowel, because there is no long U sound.
What is a short vowel? (A word doesn't necessarily have to have three letters to be a short vowel word, but it makes for the easiest example, and three-lettered words make up the bulk of any list of words with short vowels a person may comprise.)
400
A unit of pronunciation having one vowel sound, with or without surrounding consonants, forming the whole or a part of a word.
What is a syllable?
400
A vowel that is pronounced the same as the name of the letter. For example, the "U" is pronounced like "you," not like "a" which would be the sound of a short vowel.
What is a long vowel?
400
These types of digraphs spell vowel sounds using the letter pairs ai, ay, ee, ea, ie, ei, oo, ou. ow, oe, oo, ue, ey, ay, oy, oi, au, aw. The important thing to remember is that a digraph is made of two letters, and although the letters spell a sound, the digraph is the two letters, not the sound.
What is a vowel digraph?
400
The use of the same beginning consonant sound in a line or verse.
What is an alliteration?
500
A category of words that emphasizes physical sounds.
What is an onomatopoeia?
500
Teaching this skill in isolation or in combination with blending instruction helps with successful reading development. When beginning readers sound out words, they slowly say each sound in a word (c-a-t), and then say the sounds quickly together to "read" the word (cat).
What is segmentation?
500
When two words sound the same as they are spoken out loud.
What is a rhyme?
500
A vowel sound in many lightly pronounced unaccented syllables in words of more than one syllable. It is sometimes signified by the pronunciation "uh" or symbolized by an upside-down rotated e.
What is a schwa?
500
A letter, or combination of letters, that represents one or more voiced sounds in a word.
What is a phonogram? (The phonograms are the 26 alphabet letters and 46 multi-letter combinations that combine to make the 45 sounds heard in English speech.)
M
e
n
u