Phonemic Awareness Activity

The phonemic awareness lesson I chose to use was the Say it and Move it method made available in the manual of Road to the Code (Blachman, Ball, Black and Tangel, 2000). I  used this method many times working with my students last year and it proved to be quite effective. This method involves moving tiles one at a time from the top of a paper down to a line at the bottom, while saying each corresponding phoneme  /c/,/a/,/t/ and then running a finger under the tiles blending the phonemes to make a word (cat).

The lesson was completed with six students from two different first grade classrooms. The students were identified as being at risk through DIBELS scores, sight word and guided reading assessments. The group consisted of three regular education students currently in the RTI process, one ESOL student and two special education students one identified as Significantly Developmentally Delayed and the other LD. 

Procedure:

1. The students were given letter tiles and a paper designed for the Say it Move it activity.
2. The teacher explained the method of Say it Move It to the students using the example word cat. The teacher modeled how she wanted the students to move their tiles.
3. After modeling the method the students were given several words to practice the skill:  rat, sat, mat and pet.
4. To accommodate for the instructional needs of the students including the ESOL student the teacher paired the word with a picture to give the students a visual representation of the words. The teacher also did individual work with students that required more time or who did not seem to understand during the trial. 
5. As the students became more familiar with the activity new word families were introduced and tried.