I have 20 students in a phonics class varying from Grade 5 to the 1st year in middle school, their phonics awareness is very poor. In my previous four lessons I tried to teach them 26 letters' sound, some of them has yet to be strengthened whilst some has fed up with letters. So, I am wondering if anyone can provide any games for this batch students?

I like to use the zap or bankruptcy game. That always goes over well. You can also make different levels. You can have one set that is just individual letters and another set that's consonant digraphs, silent e, vowel digraphs and diphthongs.

Another game might be Phonics Old Maid.
- You need a deck of letter cards with two of each card, two As, two Bs, and so on. You'll also need one joker card.
- You deal all of the cards out to the students.
- Once the cards are dealt, students can look at their cards. If they have a pair, they will toss the pair into the center of the group (essentially discarding the pair.)
- Once all pairs have been tossed into the center pile, play begins.
- Player 1 will take one card at random from the person to his right. The other player will present his cards (not showing them) so that the player can take one card.
- If Player 1 can make a pair, they discard the pair into the center pile of cards.
- Play then continues to the left (clockwise.) Player 1 holds up his cards for the next player to take a card.
Eventually some players will lose all of their cards and they are the winners. The player left holding the joker is the loser.

To make this into a phonics game, you can have all players think of a word that starts with the letter (to reinforce phonemic awareness.) You can have them just state the reading, or both. You can prepare cards for each letter and they have to read the target word. Those cards can then serve as points for the students to collect.



I've also found that sometimes it's better to push forward. I've had some students that just couldn't remember or weren't interested in the single letters. However, we had to move on. After working with more advanced rules and getting into reading a bit more, they were able to recall and read the simple short vowels and hard consonants that were giving them problems before. By moving forward, I think they began to better understand the usefulness and purpose of those simple first phases.

Hi Mark, that sounds cool. I will try out with them all when having another phonics class. Unfortunately, that class has finished their summer vocation course by now. And will definitely make a deck of letter cards to practisea bit hoping will have a chance to use them soon. Thanks a lot, Mark!

I had problems with this too until I found a great book - Remedial Reading drills. There all the sounds are given very logically and there's a lot of practice. I think it's possible to make a leveled game from all the examples given there.
Also I play the game 'stairs'. I draw a stair and write a letter or a group of letters on each stage. Usually they are placed from the easiest to the most difficult. So students should go up the stair. If they make a mistake, they should start from the beginning.