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:
Mark the floor with colored tape or use colored paper to make boxes for sounds. Child will practice jumping into a box for each sound heard. For example, "top" would have three sounds; as would "tape."
"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.
Epic offers the option to search for books by reading level. The first grade teachers have general recommendations for levels to select during the school year. These are from the level option GRL (Guided Reading Level). These are general recommendations for first grade students:
