Teach -s and -es Endings with Phonics Games and Interventions

Teach -s and -es Endings with Phonics Games and Interventions

Hey, y'all! There are some things in classrooms that are necessities and some things that end up being just "fluff." I've been teaching for over a decade now and I feel like I've tried a bit of everything. One thing that is not fluff is anything that is targeted practice on the skills your students are learning, like our phonics centers. 

We teach the new reading skill (I do), the kids practice it with me (we do), then, in their reading rotations, the practice the skill on their own or with a partner (you do) with these phonics games and interventions. The kids love getting to flex their skills as they apply what they just learned to their everyday reading. 

One thing that became super clear to me as we were working on these centers is my students' vocabulary. Many could read the words and play the games, which is great. But they had a hard time with sound sorts or the matching cards. As adults, we can quickly figure out what picture goes with each word but our students need us to go over the pictures with them before they can play the matching or sorting games on their own. 

One student of mine was getting frustrated because they could not find the word they were looking for. They came to me and said, "Miss, I just can't find it!" I asked them what sounds they were looking for and they said, "/s/, /s/, cigarettes!" I said, "Honey, that's a picture of chalk." They immediately found the match after that, but this is a clear example of how students come to us with their own schema and vocabulary and it's up to us to show them what need to know. (And in all fairness, we don't really write with chalk like we used to!)

So, before you send your students to work on phonics centers, please make sure they know what the pictures are representing. It'll save you a ton of time and interruptions and will save them a ton of frustration!

With our -s and -es endings centers, I teach my students to listen and look for certain sounds at the end of the word to know if it should have an "s" or "es" at the end. When we're deciding if a word ends with "es," we're looking for the letters s, ss, z, ch, sh, x, and sometimes z at the end of the word. If the word doesn't end with these letters, we're probably going to add an s. Silent e words always trip the kids up because they tell me they need to add an "es" but really they're just putting an "s' on after the "e." 

After I go over the vocabulary, I'll put the matching cards, writing cards, Bump games, hidden words, and sentence scramble cards in the kids literacy centers. I hold onto the sound sorts and roll and read games to use with my small groups. I may also steal the matching cards back from them if a group really needs to practice. Then, we use the scoot game at the end of the week (or when students are ready) to assess how they're doing with the new skill. We'll also use the cards as a quiz-quiz-trade during morning meeting for continued practice. 

You can find out more about these phonics centers in my TPT store here. It's part of a growing bundle of phonics games and interventions that will last you a whole school year and will work with any curriculum your school uses. You can check out the full bundle here. While you're there, be sure to follow me on TPT so you don't miss anything new. You can expect to see more phonics games and inquiry units showing up over the next few weeks. 

I hope you found some new ideas for your classroom and learned a thing or two about teaching phonics skills. Have a wonderful week and I'll talk to you soon.

Stay cozy,