Phonics Strategies for 2nd Graders, Part 2 by Phonics Advantage

Many phonics programs emphasize written worksheets.  Often students who had poor small-motor skills in kindergarten and 1st grade had difficulty learning phonics concepts taught in this style.  Phonics Strategies series are designed to enable students to quickly advance to grade-level reading by incorporating fun and diversity into the program.  In addition to written work, students learn through listening, identifying, comparing and using hands-on activities.  Mystery Words, letter tiles, flipbooks, phonics poems and phonics games add educational fun.  Short activities mean that multiple phonics concepts and learning styles are encountered during each mentoring session.  This multifaceted approach helps to hold the focus and attention of students.

Part 2 of Phonics Strategies for 2nd Graders by Phonics Advantage is a 255-page PDF that emphasizes Vcc phonograms, R-controlled vowels phonograms and common suffixes.  Part 2 lays the groundwork for decoding long-vowel chunks and diphthong-vowel chunks that are the emphasis of Part 3 of this series.  The phonics concepts/rules on Silent E, Soft C, -le syllables (ble, ple, tle, etc.) and consonant blends that were introduced in Part 1 are reinforced in Part 2.

The purpose of the Phonics Strategies series is to enable students to become successful, independent readers by giving them tools to decode multisyllable words.  Students study the basic building blocks – phonograms types, blends and digraphs, prefixes and word endings, pronunciation and spelling rules, and common syllable dividing points.  Students learn that chunks are usually the end of a syllable.  By being able to instantly identify phonograms, word endings and prefixes, students have tools to divide multisyllable words into decodable units.

Goals and directions are at the top of each page.  Included are pages of tips and suggestions, and mentor notes.  The series can be administered by a teacher, an aid, or a parent helper in the classroom setting.   A parent letter is included with each unit for sending pages home as homework.  Phonics Strategies not only teaches the students decoding skills, it also helps the parents to become better reading mentors.