Teaching Phonics in the ESL Classroom

Here at  A Teachable Year, we love hands-on learning activities, and so, we present you with our favourite word work activity that I used with my students everyday. 

It is called "The Case of the Missing Sounds "

The premise is simple: your students are detectives who have to solve a mystery by figuring out the missing letters in a word. Detectives have to look at the picture and the word to type or write the missing letter(s).

This is a phonics-based activity that students can complete independently after you modeled how to use it. 

What I love most about this activity is that it’s easy to differentiate. Students that are working on learning blends, digraphs, diphthongs, can use the worksheets they need. If a student needs additional practice there’s an activity for that. ESL students’ needs are easily met with this set of activities!

What to do:

First of all, print off all of the sheets you want. You know your learners better than I do, so choose the ones that will appeal the most.

The missing sounds activity sheet is a popular one too. Students have to decide which of the pictures contain a short ‘a’ vowel sound, circle them and then write them in a list, remembering commas too.

Not only does this activity support the teaching of the short vowel sound for ‘a’, but it is also an excellent way of practising spelling CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words. For children whose mother tongue is English, it is one of the first phonic spelling things they will learn beyond the individual sounds. 

These short ‘a’ vowel sound cards are super. You can use them simply as flashcards to practise the essential vocabulary. Alternatively, you could get your students to choose one and then use it within a sentence.

For any resources that will be used by more than one child, we highly recommend laminating them. This ensures that they will be in decent condition to be used again. There is always debate surrounding this process. We ALWAYS cut (scissors are fine, but a guillotine is much better for achieving straight lines), then laminate and then cut again. This means that the plastic will not peel away. 

As we said earlier, there will always be exceptions to the rules, especially in English. However, using our exciting phonics packs, you will certainly be building strong foundations for their future success with the language.