Phonics is a popular method of teaching children to read that is based around the child learning to connect sounds with letters or groups of letters.
For example, the child would learn that the hard "k" sound is associated with the letters "c", "k" or "ck".
To be fair, using phonics as a method of teaching reading has not been without controversy, particularly in the United States of America, at least since the mid 19th century, and especially since the reemergence of phonics in the 1950s.
Those teachers who do use phonics, generally use them in a variety of different classroom activities, not just when students are reading from books or writing.
For example, phonics and phonics-based skills can be incorporated into many different classroom activities and educational games, including, for example, bingo.
Phonics bingo is played like the traditional game of bingo: Each player (student) is given a card containing a five by five grid of squares, and aims to mark of a line of items (horizontally, vertically or diagonally) in response to items called out by the bingo caller (teacher).
The different however between phonics bingo and traditional bingo, is that the cards, instead of being printed with numbers, are printed with words appropriate to the subject of the lesson.
Additionally, game play may be modified in a variety of different ways.
Some ideas for phonetics bingo include: 1.
Partial word bingo - The teacher says something like "find the word with 'pin' in it", in response to which the students would have to find "spin".
2.
Blending bingo - The teacher reads out a word slowly, for example "sss-nnn-aaa-p", and the students must find the corresponding word.
3.
Rhyming bingo - The teacher reads out a word, and students need to find the word that rhymes with it.
4.
Silent E bingo - The teacher reads out a word like "pin" and asks what what word you would get by adding an E.
It should also be remembered that phonics is not a complete solution to learning reading.
Students must also learn to recognize some common words which can not be sounded out (the most common list of such words is known as Dolch Sight Words).
Many teachers also emphasize learning to sight read other common words (such as "is" or "it") as this can improve reading fluency.
Therefore as well as playing phonics bingo, you can also play sight word bingo in class.