Teaching Letter Sounds: Back to School Freebie

I finally took the time to make Open Court letter-sound cards that can be used in a standard pocket chart. I love having these so that I can run them off and use them throughout the year. I made them to match the larger version that can be placed on your wall. If you never downloaded them you can find them here. 
Now I am ready to offer up these same OCR cards but they have been sized for your pocket chart. Why? I am happy to answer that. You can run these off for lots of literacy stations and routines to build a better understanding of letters and sounds. Use them as part of your daily routine.
Here is what they look like:

 Students can use these cards in literacy stations playing all kind of games. My kids like to set a timer and just make the sound for each card while a partner checks for accuracy. Memory games can be created where students either match the letter-sound card or match the sound card to the letter it starts with. This can be changed up many different ways.

At the beginning of the school year most of us like to do word work with student names and these cards provide the perfect opportunity to introduce the letter, the sound that it makes and attach this understanding to a student's name. This will require a lot of modeling at the beginning but soon students will be able to identify the first letter of their name and recognize the sound card that goes with it. This is another activity to do as part of your daily routine, picking just a few student names. Keep this easy and basic at the beginning.

Once you have worked on names you can begin to focus on beginning sounds. Select the sound card you want to focus on and see if students can place cards that begin with the same sound next to it. Give them a limited number of choices to start with. Always have an incorrect answer to make students think critically.

Later in the year students love doing these "riddle me" cards with cvc words, guessing what the words are, based on the sequence of the cards. These can become more challenging as your students build their knowledge. I love to do this as part of my morning routine and call it the mystery word. Students have wipe off boards in their lap and have to write the word based on the sound cards I use. Sometimes I put magnets on these so they can be used on a magnetic surface to change it up a bit. Are you having fun yet?

One more suggest comes to my mind. Once you have introduced all the letters and sounds hand out all the cards to the students on the carpet. Have them come up and place their card in the pocket chart , in sequence. You can have them say, "I have Pam the lamb /a/ /a/ /a/. Who has bouncing basketball /b/ /b/ /b/?" and continue until the end of the alphabet.
Do you have any ideas or suggestions? Leave a comment and I really appreciate you giving me some fresh activities.

How do I get these cards? Easy! You will just click on this image and it will take you to my FB page. Stay with me it won't be that hard (promise).

1. Now you are on my FB page so click at the top and "like" the page and check "get          

    notifications. Fantastic. I like you too. Be sure you are following me. We are BFFs now.

2. Now find those same little kids on the left side in the little blue box. Click on it and it will open 

    up since you hit that special like button.

3. The crayon box will pop up ( I love crayons). Click on that!

4. Now the file shows up and you can download it. I hope you love having these.