Simple games to play, devised by Jenny Chew:
1. With the few children I have taught who had already developed habits of guessing or learning logographically, I have also made use of non-words to steer them into decoding habits - obviously the non-words were not already in the child's oral vocabulary, but we pretended that they were real words in a foreign language (which they might easily have been). I devised a game where we had cards with either real words or non-words matching the child's decoding level (e.g. just 'basic code' at first and then digraphs etc. later). The child would pick the cards up one by one, sound out and blend, decide whether the word was a real one or not, and put the non-words into a home-made mailbox as if they were to be sent to an imaginary character who would understand them because he spoke the relevant language.

2. One thing I used to do which my very weak pupil really enjoyed was to have cards with cvc words at one side of the room and the objects for those words at the other side (e.g. pin, peg, tin, cup, mug, pen, pan, bun, bag, mop, net, box etc. He would pick up a card, work out what it said, run across the room (I pretended to time him) and try and put it on the right object. This meant that he was physically active, and I think he also enjoyed the very
concrete reading-for-meaning angle. For longer basic-code words I used things such as plug, clip, lamp, plant, carrot, magnet, sandal, twig, cotton, pasta. When we got on to digraphs, I would use spoon, fork, brush, tea bag, cloth, dish, card, cord, soap, glue, book, toy car, nail, Mars bar etc. Then I used to give him sentences: e.g. 'Put the soap on the dish', 'Make a cross with the spoon and fork', 'Switch on the lamp', 'Clip the card to the cloth', 'Put the tea bag in the mug', 'Pick up the pin with the magnet' ... culminating, perhaps, in 'Eat the Mars bar'!

3. Make up lists of questions matched to the child's decoding level, some of which conjure up corny images and some of which don't. For example, at the stage when the child knows only single letters and their sounds (no digraphs) and is reading only 3-letter words, one might have the questions 'Has a pig six legs?' 'Can a dog run?', 'Is a cat a pet?', 'Can a fox fit in a tin can?' If the child can manage slightly longer words, one might have 'Did Miss Muffet sit on a rabbit?', 'Can frogs swim in ponds?'. If the child has learned 'ar', 'ee', 'oo' and 'sh', one can have 'Will a shark jump up a tree?', 'Can men get wool from sheep?', 'Must a car stop if it has a crash?' I used to get the children to read the questions and write 'yes' or 'no' after them.

4.Teaching segmenting. A formula that I found worked with my grandson, after he had been blending for a few months, was for me to say 'CAT is /c/ - /a/ - /t/. DOG is /d/ - /o/ - ???'. After a few of these, I would say only the first sound, and then I would just say 'PEN is ???'. He caught on in about 20 minutes, spread over 2 days. What was very interesting at this point was that he could instantly segment with untaught sounds as well as with taught ones - e.g. he hadn't learnt any digraphs for reading (he was only 2+) but could segment 'sheep' and 'goat' as easily as 'cat' and 'dog'.’’

Phonic Dice for games and activities: Make your own dice using this template www.senteacher.org/wk/dice1.php
Add the following graphemes (based on Jolly Phonics letter introduction order) to the faces, highlighting the vowels and vowel digraphs.
Dice 1. s a t i p n
Dice 2. c k ck e h r
Dice 3. m d g o u l
Dice 4. f b ai j oa ie
Dice 5. ee or z w ng nk
Dice 6. v oo y x ch sh
Dice 7. th qu ou oi ue er
Dice 8. ar y ce ge se ve

Ready-made sets of phonic dice (home or classroom editions) can be ordered from www.candocubes.com/synthetic-phonics-products.php

www.belb.org.uk/teachers/LPTalk/Swap.pdf Swap card game -instructions are on sheet 34.

www.geocities.com/sen_resources/resources.html Phonic board games to print out plus 'blank' boards to customise

www.senteacher.org/wk/certificates.php Easily customised certificate.

www.tes.co.uk/resources/Resource.aspx?resourceId=9372 Treasure Hunt game for interactive whiteboards or computers -to practice CVC word blending.

www.kented.org.uk/ngfl/games/ Several 'phoneme' games to download here, including 'Sound Buttons': select the vowel phoneme pattern then select other phonemes to create a word. Finally press the sound buttons to listen and blend.

Jolly Phonics interactive games on CD-ROM: 20 games / 3 levels. http://jollylearning.co.uk/2008%20Catalogue.pdf

www.gamzuk.com Packs of simple card games -some suitable for use with linguistic/synthetic phonic programmes

www.cleverspellgames.co.uk Pack of phonic games which follow the Sound Reading System programme structure, suitable for one-to-one or group teaching.