📚✨When They Finish First… What Do You Give Them Next?

Hi all! ❤️

August is finished, and many of you are already getting ready to plan lessons that will meet the needs of your dear pupils.

In all of this, differentiation is a cornerstone of good teaching. And while we are usually very good at reducing, adapting or scaffolding the workload for children who struggle, we sometimes forget about those who learn quickly, finish early and are hungry for more.

You know that child.

The one who always finishes first, but whose reading level is still not quite strong enough to pick up a little book independently or follow lengthy, complex instructions without your help.

So what happens?

You give them another task. Then another. And before long, you find yourself spending precious time explaining something new to the child who has already finished, while the rest of the class is still working and needs your attention.

This is exactly where these phonics activity books come in.

They are designed to complement, not replace, your phonics lessons. The activity books come into play after each new group of sounds has been explicitly taught in class, providing children with meaningful opportunities to consolidate, review and practise what they have already learned.

They are particularly valuable for those children who are ready to work more independently, yet are not quite ready to access traditional reading materials on their own.

The activities are engaging, hands-on and carefully structured around the phonics children already know. The instructions are accessible, so children can understand what to do without needing you to sit beside them and explain every step.

That means purposeful practice for them—and more teaching time for you.

Because differentiation isn't only about giving less to the children who need support.

Sometimes, it's about making sure the children who are ready to move ahead have somewhere meaningful to go.

And because, let's be honest, being a fast finisher shouldn't mean sitting there waiting for the teacher. ❤️

So… I'm incredibly excited to finally share a project I've poured my heart into:

Read, Find, Colour & Count! ❤️

✨ A phonics activity series designed to make independent practice meaningful, accessible and fun.

Each booklet is designed to be used after a new group of sounds has been explicitly taught, giving children the opportunity to consolidate what they already know while developing confidence in decoding.

Another feature I carefully considered is the format of each booklet.

Every page has been designed so that children can successfully complete the activities, regardless of their confidence level. I strongly believe that experiencing success is essential for building motivation and self-esteem.

When children finish a page thinking “I can do this!”, they become more willing to keep learning and to tackle new challenges with confidence.

Each booklet offers four engaging learning experiences:

📖 Read – Read simple phonics words and develop decoding skills.

🔍 Find – Search for the target word among many others, strengthening visual discrimination, concentration and word recognition.

🎨 Colour – Turn every page into a relaxing colouring activity while reinforcing learning and developing fine motor skills.

🔢 Count – Count the matching pictures, combining early literacy with numeracy practice.

AND... GAMES! of course😁

🌀 Mazes
🧠 Memory
🐍 Snakes & Ladders
4️⃣ 4 in a Row
👏 Snap
🐟 Go Fish...

The books are photocopiable, making them perfect for classroom use, literacy centres, homework, independent practice, intervention groups, early finishers or homeschooling.

👧👦 They are especially suitable for children in the final year of kindergarten and Year 1 / Grade 1 who are beginning their reading journey.

🎁 And I have a little gift for you!

The first booklet in the series is available FREE as a PDF when you subscribe to the Miss Lucy's Teaching Fun newsletter.

It's my little way of saying thank you for joining this wonderful community of teachers and parents. ❤️

If you'd rather have the printed version—or explore the rest of the collection—you can find the books on Amazon:

👉 Read, Find, Colour and Count SATPIN

👉 Read, Find, Colour and Count CKEHRMD

or 👉  in my store on Payhip

As an English teacher, I've always believed that teaching children to read through phonics is one of the most practical and useful skills we can equip them with.

When children learn to decode words confidently, they don't just learn to read—they build the foundations to truly master the English language.

This is exactly why I created this series.

My dream is to help bring systematic phonics instruction into ESL classrooms, where this essential part of literacy is still often overlooked in favour of less systematic approaches to early reading.

In my experience, explicit phonics instruction—including the correct pronunciation of each sound—supports every aspect of language learning. It helps children become more confident speakers, more accurate readers and stronger listeners by enabling them to connect sounds, letters and meaning.

I truly hope these books help many little learners discover that learning to read can be meaningful, confidence-building… and lots of fun! 💛

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🌟 ¡Learning English doesn’t simply mean filling in the blanks! 🇬🇧✨

Many English as a Second Language (ESL) activities rely solely on “fill-in-the-blank” exercises ✏️… but the real goal should be to help children speak, understand, and use English naturally. 🗣️💬

🎨 Learning by doing makes it much easier, more fun, and more motivating!

And you’ll be surprised at how quickly children can start achieving real results. 🌈🚀

📚 If you’re looking for creative and engaging activities to make English learning more dynamic, check out my online store! 🛍️💕

👉 ESL Children's Worksheets

✨ Learn, play, speak, and grow! ❤️

Auditory discrimination: i / e

Finally, July! June's been a busy but rewarding month, so today I'm going to share some thoughts, ideas and resources to address the topic of short vowel discrimination with our children, starting with /I/ and /e/.

Short vowels are the first to be learned with the phonetic method but, while on the one hand the children recognize them visually because they associate them with the vowels of the Spanish language, on the other hand more work of auditory discrimination is necessary so that they can hear and pronounce them correctly.

I have noticed that there are pairs of sounds that Spanish speakers tend to confuse more frequently: the i and the e, the a and the lo u, and finally the o and the u. 

How to do this? Once the 2 sounds have been introduced separately with the appropriate activities and games, it is necessary to point out the difference between the pair of vowels that could generate confusion.

The easiest way to operate is to give each child a letter that represents the e and another that represents the i. Then we tell them, one by one, 3 or 4 letter words with one of the two sounds we are working on; the children have to indicate with the letter what sound they have heard.

For example:
tin/ten
pin/pen
pit/pet
rid/red
miss/mess
sit/set

Ideally, this list should be combined with other words that are not written with the same consonants (net, mist, get, hiss, etc.) and presented in random order, so that the children will be able to guess correctly more easily and feel more confident when it comes to answering. There are many more in the word boxes of the Jolly Phonics© method.

Now you can create more or less fun versions of this activity: in my class we usually jump over the chart, throw balloons or run to the chart to add a little psychomotor skills to the class and thus encourage deeper learning.


What to do when a child is wrong? I tell you what I usually do: first I repeat the word with the vowel he has chosen and then I pronounce it with the correct sound, then I encourage them to repeat it themselves, taking into account the position of their lips, tongue and teeth (phonetic articulation), to finally encourage him to repeat the word correctly and show me the corresponding letter.

Over the years I have come to realize that this is a very important job because the few hours of exposure to English in a school class are not enough for children to acquire this phonemic awareness on their own. It is important to emphasize it. What the children will do is realize, little by little, the differences between the vowels in their native language and those in English.

Here is the link to the pronunciation of the /e/ sound for you to practice ;)

More about phonics on my newest page: reading and writing in English, where I have compiled and will add links to related posts.

  



 

Jolly Phonics - Teach Your Cute Little Monsters to Read

Over the last 2 years I've been teaching some children who were finding learning to read difficult and they also made lots of mistakes when writing.  As a result, and despite their best efforts, their academic results weren't satisfying at all. When I started to help them, their self-esteem was non-existent; they showed no interest in learning English, and, since they had experienced failure so often, they didn't even try to write correctly anymore and, of course, they didn't like reading at all.

To try to solve the whole situation it occurred to me to use phonics: If my students had begun by learning to decode a word by identifying the sounds it's composed of, they would at least have had a tool to help them write that word correctly. Having said that, if they had learnt how to read a word correctly, they would have been able to recognize it even when someone else said it, which would have improved their learning ability overall.

It worked. After a few sessions of studying phonics they've started to do better in English tests, their self-esteem has 'risen from the ashes' and they have even started to enjoy reading.

But, what are phonics?

Each letter of the alphabet makes a sound. Also, different combinations of letters produce other sounds such as 'th', 'sh', 'oo' or 'ee' for example. Words are made by blending all these sounds together from left to right.

More details about phonics are available here

What I like about the theory behind phonics is the fact that children acquire a decoding tool they will be able to use at any time with any word. Phonics improve their reasoning skills which is exactly what we, as teachers, should look for: children who can think.

In order to delve a little bit deeper into this topic I took a course in June where I learnt about the Jolly Phonics method of teaching phonics.

I definitely recommend it to anyone, both teachers and parents, because the amount of English words that children have to learn has increased dramatically over the last 7 years. In addition to English as a subject, kids are now studying science, social studies, art and music in English, which means there are many, many words to read, remember and write correctly if they want to get high marks. Learning every single word by heart, as children are doing now, is exhausting and certainly doesn't improve their love for learning or reading.

This year I'm going to follow the Jolly Phonics method to teach my youngest students, who are 4, 5 and 6 years old. If you too wold like to know more about it I suggest you take a look at the Jolly Learning website first and then attend one of their courses. To do so, you can get in touch with Beki, who, by the way, is a great trainer, her classes are dynamic and really entertaining, exactly as we like them at Miss Lucy's ;)

More about this topic here, here and here.

--> Quiero leer este post en castellano

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🌟 ¡Learning English doesn’t simply mean filling in the blanks! 🇬🇧✨

Many English as a Second Language (ESL) activities rely solely on “fill-in-the-blank” exercises ✏️… but the real goal should be to help children speak, understand, and use English naturally. 🗣️💬

🎨 Learning by doing makes it much easier, more fun, and more motivating!

And you’ll be surprised at how quickly children can start achieving real results. 🌈🚀

📚 If you’re looking for creative and engaging activities to make English learning more dynamic, check out my online store! 🛍️💕

👉 ESL Children's Worksheets

✨ Learn, play, speak, and grow! ❤️

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📍Do you struggle with a challenging class, where many of your students get distracted and their academic performance doesn’t reflect all the effort you put into preparing and teaching your lessons? 

📍Does this situation frustrate you, and would you like your students to learn more while enjoying the process? 

👉Something similar happened to me during my elementary teaching internship, and in my latest book, Pygmalion in the Classroom: A Real Experience—based on my senior thesis and my internship at a primary school in Madrid—I’ll tell you how we managed to turn things around and achieve resounding success! 

Don’t miss it! 

Available in digital and print formats on Amazon in every country, and on the major e-book platforms.

Phonics - Teaching Reading and Writing (ESL)

http://dollarstoremom.com/2011/04/make-a-phonics-flip-chart/

In one of my previous posts I wrote that my challenge for 2014 was going to be teaching reading and writing in English to some of my students who could already understand and speak English quite well.

Looking for some ideas and advice I came across such an abundance of strategies and material that I almost felt overwhelmed.

However, I've been able to design an effective plan that is already showing some results.

Everything started to become clearer when I was able to take a look at a collection of booklets specifically designed with the purpose of teaching phonics.

It's published by Collins and it's called Collins Easy Learning Age 5-7

It's interesting because the books cover many letter sounds with examples and colorful drawings. Also, there are a couple of workbooks to keep practicing a little more.

I decided to use them as a sort of guide through the maze of phonics, but also as a 'test' to use at the end of each module.

Then, following my 'guide', I searched the internet looking for entertaining activities linked to phonics, first of all because I wanted to dive deep into the topic and second because engaged kids are the secret to successful teaching.

Well… I would say I found a treasure. 

Look at this page and take your time to explore it, because it's an amazing source of almost anything you need to teach this topic.

The worksheets you'll find here are great! Crosswords, puzzles, cut and paste activities, cards. So far my students have enjoyed them a lot.

Furthermore, it's so nice to see how the children are getting more and more confident with every class.

I can see how they are reasoning about what letters they need to write every single word, making a big effort not to peep at the word bank that follows the exercises.

However, the best of all is seeing their eyes light up with satisfaction when they realize that they can spell correctly.

Below, I give you a list of other things I'm using these days to expand the phonics experience:

- Cards to teach Rhyming words and Phonics

- Spelling Games from Instant File-Folder Games for Reading grade 1-3 published by Scholastic
  (sample pages available)

- Success with Reading Comprehension Grade 1, also published by Scholastic
  (sample pages available)

- Dr Seuss rhyming books (Children love them!)

- Alphablocks cartoons. (Very engaging and fun. Available on YouTube)

As you can see, tons of material is available, so I personally selected those phonics that Spanish children would find the trickiest to recognize. I imagine that kids from other countries will need to focus on different sounds and patterns.

Good luck with your work and, as always, have fun!

More about reading

More about writing

---> Quiero leer esta entrada en español

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

🌟 ¡Learning English doesn’t simply mean filling in the blanks! 🇬🇧✨

Many English as a Second Language (ESL) activities rely solely on “fill-in-the-blank” exercises ✏️… but the real goal should be to help children speak, understand, and use English naturally. 🗣️💬

🎨 Learning by doing makes it much easier, more fun, and more motivating!

And you’ll be surprised at how quickly children can start achieving real results. 🌈🚀

📚 If you’re looking for creative and engaging activities to make English learning more dynamic, check out my online store! 🛍️💕

👉 ESL Children's Worksheets

✨ Learn, play, speak, and grow! ❤️

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

📍Do you struggle with a challenging class, where many of your students get distracted and their academic performance doesn’t reflect all the effort you put into preparing and teaching your lessons? 

📍Does this situation frustrate you, and would you like your students to learn more while enjoying the process? 

👉Something similar happened to me during my elementary teaching internship, and in my latest book, Pygmalion in the Classroom: A Real Experience—based on my senior thesis and my internship at a primary school in Madrid—I’ll tell you how we managed to turn things around and achieve resounding success! 

Don’t miss it! 

Available in digital and print formats on Amazon in every country, and on the major e-book platforms.