First Grade Activities Helping With Short Vowel Sounds

Learning short vowel sounds is an important step to becoming a successful reader, and first grade is the prime time to work on this skill. According to "Put Reading First," a booklet published by the National Institute for Literacy, "Phonics instruction is most effective when it begins in kindergarten or first grade," and "knowing vowel letter-sound relationships is a crucial part of knowing the alphabetic system." Activities that teach short vowel sounds reinforce important skills.

One Step Forward

"One Step Forward" is a game to use after students have begun to distinguish between long and short vowel sounds. Tell students to listen as you read pairs of words. Use short words, one with a long vowel sound and one with a short vowel sound, such as "goat and got." Tell them which word has the long vowel and which has the short vowel. Have the students stand up. Instruct them to stand still when you read the word with the long vowel and to take one step when you say the word with the short vowel. Have a list with about twenty pairs of words. You can alter the game by having children take one step for long vowels and two for short vowels, or instructing them to hop when they hear the word with the short vowel.

Hop on Pop

For practice with short vowel sounds, the iconic Dr. Seuss books are hard to top. Consider these lines from "Hop on Pop:" "Sad Dad Bad Had. Dad is sad. Very, very sad. He had a bad day. What a day Dad had!" "The Cat in the Hat" and "Fox in Socks" are also classic Seuss stories that include lots of short vowel sounds. Students learn these sounds as they hear and then read the stories out loud. According to "Put Reading First," "Repeated oral reading improves the reading ability of all students throughout the elementary school years."

Turn Students into World-Sleuths

The teaching blog "Made for First Grade" suggests having your students become "short vowel detectives." Use a chart with two columns for each vowel. For example, the first column's heading is "short a" and the second column's heading is "page number." Have the students find words in their reading books that have short vowel sounds, and then write the words and the page number where they found them on the chart. Use props such as magnifying glasses and badges to make the game more fun.

All in the Family

Word families are groups of words that rhyme and end with the same letters, such as bling, ring and sing. Short vowels are used as a part of many word families. Students can practice using short vowels by putting together letters to form word families. Print words such as bad, mad, sad and had, cut apart the letters, mix them up and have the students choose letters to put together and make into words. You can also use Scrabble tiles or alphabet flash cards.


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