Hooray for A

We have been working hard building words with short a.  In phonics and spelling, we have done a variety of activities to practice reading and writing short a words.  While we have been spelling many short a words our focus words have been: an, can, man, fan, ran, pan, at, sat, cat, hat, rat, and bat.

In this game, students use the foldable to practice their words.  The students were having so much fun with the actions that I don't think they even realized how much learning they were doing.

For clipboard cruising this week at centers, the students found short a words taped up around the room.  Then, they sorted the words by the shape they make.  Also, in centers the students stamped the short a words.  For the tiny word search, students used a magnifying glass to find their words.

One of my favorite spelling activities this week was a short a word scramble.  The children got a list of the words scrambled then used their ipad to help them unscramble the words.  We used an app called Word Wizard.  Word Wizard is a moveable alphabet that reads the students the words they create.  The students were able to move the letters around and hear the sequence of sounds and determine if they created a correctly spelled short a word.

 In addition to Word Wizard, there are some other great apps for building words.  Segmenting is a very important early reading and writing skill.  The Reading Magic (1,2,3,and 4) and Spelling Magic (1, 2, and 3) are some free apps that help practice segmenting and blending words. It is a great series that gets progressively harder with each numbered addition. Good news, they are all FREE!