Teach the Five Components of Reading (with Just One Thanksgiving Phonics Poem)

Image of Thanksgiving pilgrim holding mashed potatoes

Teach the Five Components of Reading (with Just One Thanksgiving Phonics Poem)

With the Thanksgiving holiday fast approaching, November is a shorter teaching month, so every literacy mini-lesson really needs to count. Would you believe one short Thanksgiving poem can help you teach all five of the essential components of reading? It’s absolutely true. For example, the Thanksgiving poem, “Mashed Potatoes,” targets the consonant digraphs /ch/and /sh/ …

Image of "A Brooding Witch," from Halloween Phonics poems by Lorrie L. Birchall

Halloween Poems for Teaching Phonics

Who wants to teach dry or boring phonics lessons? No one, that’s who. That’s why short Halloween poems written especially for kids help make teaching phonics skills easier, more targeted, and definitely a whole lot more fun. Halloween poems are perfect for teaching literacy mini-lessons in October It would be a shame not to include …

Teach -au With This FREE Autumn Poem

I’ve collected plenty of autumn poems for kids over the years, but for teaching phonics, I could never find exactly what I needed. That’s when I first started writing poems with a teaching target in mind. When it came time to write a poem for the au vowel digraph (vowel team), it was a no …

Image of cat eating mouse from phonics poem, "Mice in Line," by Lorrie L. Birchall

Teach Phonics with Short Poems

First of all, what are phonics poems? They’re simply poems that can be used as good examples (exemplars) to teach specific phonics skills. Why use phonics poems for teaching reading? 1. Phonics poems provide an efficient use of short instructional time: As a reading intervention teacher, I typically had between 15-20 minutes to work with …