Short Vowel Activities to Get Students Moving

Posted by Brainspring on 12th Jan 2015

Vowel Intensive

The short vowel activities in the video are fantastic adaptations to the basic Vowel Intensive in Phonics First. A Vowel Intensive asks the students to focus on differentiating between two, or maybe three, vowel sounds. )I find it best to only use two sounds at a time.) The idea is for the student to somehow indicate which vowel they hear in sounds, words or pseudo words you say. They can do this by holding up the corresponding vowel stick, or one of the more kinetic ideas I showed today.

A Vowel Intensive should be a quick activity, 2-3 minutes. In that time, you should go through these 3 steps, increasing the difficulty of isolating the vowel sound.

1) Say the vowel sounds in isolation. (/a/, /o/, /o/, /a/…)

2) Put a consonant sound after the vowel. (od, an, ap, ag, ot…)

3) Use the vowels sound in the middle of a word or pseudo-word. (zap, sod, tan, pod, rav, lom…)

Cut and Paste Contractions

Dite, at Ladder Learning Services, has a quick, interactive activity for practicing contractions with “not”. All you’ll need is scissors, glue and a highlighter. She has the worksheet ready for you to print off!