Reading Resources for ECP-Grade 1: Beginning Readers

Remember: phonemes are sounds, not letters.

Practicing the sounds heard in a word is an essential step in the process toward learning to read those words. This kind of practice can be done in lots of fun ways! You can use beads on a chenille stem and move one over for each sound heard. Small Play-doh balls can be used to squish one for each sound. Circles on the floor can be used to jump on for each sound heard. There are some images and links below with ideas:

"The "onset" is the initial phonological unit of any word (e.g. c in cat) and the term "rime" refers to the string of letters that follow, usually a vowel and final consonants (e.g. at in cat). Not all words have onsets. Similar to teaching beginning readers about rhyme, teaching children about onset and rime helps them recognize common chunks within words. This can help students decode new words when reading and spell words when writing."(From Reading Rockets)

As an example of practice you can do using onset & rime - practice adding sounds like this:

a

am

amp

camp

Practice changing initial sounds and ending sounds. 

There are some great activities - and additional information - at this link on Reading Rockets.