If you’ve been around my blog for any amount of time, I’m sure you have noticed how much I absolutely LOVE anchor charts. I use anchor charts as part of almost every new skill and concept I introduce to my students. Introducing and teaching short vowels is no exception. With the help of some easy-to-use short vowel anchor charts and kid-friendly activities, your students will be practicing and learning their short vowels in no time. I am so excited to share with you some of my favorite activities to introduce, practice, and master short vowels.
Short Vowel Introduction
Introducing your students to short vowel sounds is fun and easy. With just a few simple activities designed to help your students practice over several days they will be mastering those short vowel sounds in time.
I like to start by asking my students to make the connection between visual clues and written letters. Asking students to name a variety of objects that start with our target short vowel sound is a great introduction activity. Beginning sounds is the easiest way to get students to hear the sound.
Once my students have the target sound at the beginning, I move on using the sound as part of the ending word family. I start this by saying words and over exaggerating the short vowel sound. Before long, students jump in with other words that have the target sound. Pretty soon, the students start hearing the rhyming patterns that are so easy to make with short vowel word families.
Before you know it, students are moving on to bigger, unrelated words with the target sound. It’s exciting to watch as they realize that these important alphabet sounds are in many, many words. This is one of those special “lightbulb” moments.
When first introducing short vowel sounds, I generally focus on one short vowel sound per day. I like to follow this same procedure and activities for each of our new vowel sounds. On the last day, we do a review of all the short vowel sounds using our completed anchor chart.
Teacher Tip: Timing
As you teach short vowel sounds I would encourage you not to rush through them. Take the time to make sure your students have a good foundation before moving on. While I generally teach a new sound each day, this is always after we’ve already worked on each letter of the alphabet. So the letter and sound is a review that we begin building on. Still, there are years when I need to slow down because my students need extra practice. That’s OK too! These short vowel sounds are so important to our beginning readers that it is worth taking all the time you need for your students to build a strong foundation. You’ll be happy you did as you move into other reading skills.
Short Vowel Anchor Chart
After we play some word games as a warm-up we jump right into creating our short vowel anchor chart. The students love creating the centerpiece of the anchor chart and connecting it to the target sound.
Each of the short vowel anchor charts also comes with a cute rhyme. This rhyme helps students to remember the short vowel sound and a word or two with that sound. The students love learning the rhyme and reciting it together. This is a great tool to help those auditory and musical learners in your classroom.
Short Vowel Sound Picture Cards
Next up, it’s time to start adding words, lots and lots of words. I like to do this like a class scavenger hunt. Sometimes I let students find real objects in the classroom with the target sound and other times I hide picture cards around the room. The students love searching for the sound and it’s a great way to get a little movement in the day.
The students bring their words or cards back to the carpet and we begin going through them and finding the target sound. It isn’t long before students notice that many of the words have the same ending. This is a great time to introduce the concept of word families if you haven’t already done that.
Short Vowel Word Sort
Once students have their short vowel cards in hand it’s time to put them on the anchor charts. The first thing we do is add some word family headers that correlate with the word cards. We talk about what a word family is and what sound it makes.
After introducing all the word families it’s time to start sorting. This is a great time for the entire class to participate in sounding out and reading the short vowel words. Once students read the word, I ask for a volunteer to decide where it should go on the anchor chart.
We take turns placing the short vowel words under their correct word family. I like to take a little extra time to have the class read each of the words on the short vowel anchor chart again before finishing the activity.
This short vowel sound picture card activity is also a great vocabulary-building activity too! The students learn new words or synonyms for words they know. Putting together our class anchor chart is definitely one of my student’s most favorite activities.
Extra Short Vowel Fun
The word cards and word family cards can be used for more than just the anchor chart. I love to print out two sets of word cards and one set of word family cards on cardstock. After laminating they are perfect for a variety of games or center activities. Use them to create center sorting activities or a CVC word reading memory game.
Short Vowel Anchor Charts
You can find all of the short vowel anchor charts in the Emily Education store.
Fill Your Phonics Lessons with Interactive Anchor Charts
If you are as excited about phonics anchor charts as much as I am, this Interactive Phonics Anchor Charts Bundle is for you! It includes everything you will need to create interactive phonics anchor charts all year long! Your students will love being an active part of each phonics lesson and you’ll be amazed at how these anchor charts help them master phonics skills.
Save These Short Vowel Anchor Chart Ideas!
Be sure to pin these short vowel anchor chart ideas to your favorite Pinterest teacher board so you can come back any time for fun and engaging short vowel activities you and your students will love!
