With over 250 different spelling patterns in English, helping students grasp these variations can be tough – but it’s essential! 

That’s where Sort It comes in—a simple yet powerful phonics activity that speeds up phonics mastery by grouping advanced sounds into manageable chunks. 

Let’s dive into how Sort It can make teaching advanced sounds like long vowels, digraphs, and diphthongs a breeze!

Many Students Struggle with Advanced Phonics

Have you ever taught a student like Anthony?

Anthony’s finishing 1st grade, and he seems to be making strides in his reading. 

He generally aims to create meaning, and his knowledge of high-frequency words is growing steadily. 

He likes books, especially Star Wars, and can write a logical short paragraph…

However,  

You wonder whether the phonics activities you’ve been using are sinking in.

Because, one day, he might misread the word “coat” as “kate.”

And you think –

Haven’t we covered the “oa” spelling enough?

But within that same week,

He reads “soap” correctly and then gets stuck on “pain” because of the “ai” spelling.

And you’re like –

Uhhh…we spent a week on that “ai” spelling!

Unfortunately, Anthony’s inability to quickly master the trickier parts of our written code isn’t unusual.

Joe and Joan /oa/ sound story on whiteboard

Nearly 100% of the striving readers I have worked with in the last 20 years have had this exact same problem. 

Our written code, as I’m sure you know, is particularly tough to learn.

There are over 250 different spellings to memorize and use correctly!

I understand how frustrating is is to see students read, write, spell, and work with letter sounds for several days – only to find out a little while later – many of them still struggle with those same letter sounds!  

You’ve tried everything:

…Playdough, 

…Dot-it markers, 

…Worksheets, 

…Apps, 

…Kinesthetic actions – all for naught?

Perhaps all your students learned the main sounds of the alphabet’s 26 letters, but the variations in vowels—what we call Advanced Phonics—elude many students.

Or, at the very least, those oodles of long vowel combinations and diphthongs and vowel digraphs take months and often years to learn.

Today, I want to propose one streamlined activity that has the potential to boost your students’ phonics learning—dramatically.

 And, thus, their decoding and fluency in its wake. 

It may even accomplish so much that other phonics activities might be set aside.

Why Students Struggle to Memorize Advanced Phonics

Before I suggest the solution, 

Let’s take a look at the sources and scope of the problem.

First, consider what a typical basal or reading program recommends for the teaching of Advanced Phonics sounds (such as long vowels, diphthongs, or other vowel digraphs like “oa,” “ie,” “oo,” or “igh”). 

Usually, one or two spellings are taught daily. 

At times, these spellings focus on a specific sound for several days in a row. 

However – sometimes the spellings seem quite random.

Child thinking with pen on forehead and notebook in hand with advanced vowel spellings around head

A child might be expected to learn “igh” on Monday.

Then “ow” on Tuesday.

And “oi” on Wednesday.

Not much organization here for the child’s brain to hang new information on!  

Those who might struggle with learning to read or those with weak oral or visual memories will find this haphazard, random order especially challenging. 

The odds that they’ll remember what they were “taught” last Monday on the following Friday are really low.

Have you taught kids like that before?

I certainly have.

Besides the randomness of some advanced phonics progressions, the never-ending lists of phonics information to teach just, frankly, gives teachers a headache.

I mean, come on, honestly, 

When you look at a scope and sequence like that goes on and on and on, you must be thinking, 

I’m supposed to teach 262 individual items to each child in my class!?!

Worse still – how in the world do you differentiate to meet each of those 25-30+ students’ needs with over 250 items?  

Let’s see, Maria has learned items 1-14, 15, 18, and 22.

Noah has learned 1-19, 22, 24-29, and

Elijah has learned the first 200,

etc., etc.,

The possible combinations would look like this—for just 25 students:

😮 

Too much to even think about.

So, when the administration pressures you to differentiate phonics instruction – and you feel as if your head will explode – it’s completely understandable…

Because, let’s face it – that IS impossible!

But what if you look at phonics instruction through a different lens…

And discover an activity that allows you to teach multiple spellings simultaneously?

Group Phonics Activities by Sound, Not by Spelling

First, don’t think of advanced phonics instruction as isolated, individual spellings. 

Rather, think in terms of sounds. 

There are only about 40-ish sounds in the English language.  

Doesn’t 40 seem a lot more doable than 250?

From this perspective, the often overwhelming phonics scope and sequence becomes much less daunting.

Similarly, and more importantly, grouping by sounds helps the student more rapidly memorize the variations in spellings of each sound. 

For instance, in one lesson introduce the long vowel “o” and its major spellings (i.e., “o,” “o_e,” “ow,” “oa,” “oe”). 

Your students – even Kindergarteners – can comprehend this.

 And… it speeds up the learning process.

Why?

A young learner’s brain is better equipped to remember random pieces of information, like “ow” representing the /oa/ sound, when these elements are grouped together.

Think about how we share phone numbers: in groups of 3’s or 4’s: ex: 999-555-5455.

Grouping or chunking information is one of the best ways for the brain to absorb new information.

In addition, the chunking of this information by sound is a more logical presentation for the child. 

He already knows the sounds in words. 

You just need to create the bridge to the precise spellings:

/oa/ = o, o_e, ow, oa, o

So, we introduce the long “o” sound and its most frequent spellings (“o,” “o_e,” “ow,” “oa,” “oe”) in one session. 

When we allow students to discover the main spellings of one sound all at once, they acquire a better understanding of how our written code works:

After coming out of most Kindergarten reading programs that teach mostly just consonants and short vowels –

Many of these children are unprepared for this rude awakening:

That English vowel sounds can be represented with a number of different spellings.

So, we introduce them to the complexity of our spelling system early.

And guess what?

They can handle it. 

With simple CVC and CCVC or CVCC words, the spelling patterns are usually predictable and usually demonstrate 1-to-1 relationships.

For example, in a K program, “s” is almost always /s/, and there’s only one way to represent that sound. 

Nothing wrong with that!

Nonetheless, this concept that one sound, such as /oa/, can have multiple spellings seems out of the blue to many rising 1st graders. 

But – an activity like Sort It quickly reorients young learners to the true nature of our written code.

…It’s not too late.

Sort It: A Phonics Activity for Rapid Learning

So, where do you begin…

Rather than teaching spellings in isolation – slowly dripping them out – try introducing one sound and its various spellings all at once with an activity we call Sort It.

With around 40 sounds in English, this approach simplifies the scope and sequence for both teachers and students, who only need to focus on learning a handful of sound-based spellings each week.

Example: When introducing the /oa/ sound, students learn multiple spellings (like “oa,” “ow,” “o,” “o_e”) in one lesson, creating a “file” for /oa/ sounds in their memory.

How Sort It Works

  1. Introduce the Target Sound: The teacher presents a list of high-frequency words of a target sound, such as /oa/, and she tells her students that all of the words they will try to read have the sound /oa—–/.  She also has them create several columns on a blank paper, or she offers them a Sort It worksheet.

    The oa sound Sort It sheet with columns for each spelling, Sort It list, and key sentence mnemonic

  2. Reveal the Key Sentence: If the students’ paper is blank, she reveals the Key Sentence and the spellings of the target sound that should be written in each column.  For instance, see the example of /oa/ on the right:

     

  3. Organize by Spelling: The teacher asks a student or small group of students to read a word and determine which spelling of /oa/ that word belongs with. Ex. In which column does the word “show” belong?

  4. Sort and Write: Then, the students write that word in the relevant column. For instance, the word “road” goes under the “oa” spelling. As students write the word, they also say each sound separately (i.e., /r/ /oa/ /d/).

  5. Repeat for Mastery: Students repeat the reading, and the Write & Say steps several times, filling out multiple words under each spelling. Columns with spellings that are more frequent, such as “ow,” have more words placed in them than columns with less frequent spellings, such as “oe.”

If you’d like to see Sort It in action, here’s a clip of new 2nd grader who is experienced with Sort It:

 

Mnemonics & Organization Boost Memory

You may have noticed the importance of the Key Sentence in the above examples – ”Go home to show the boat to Joe.” 

The Key Sentences are mnemonics – or memory devices – that serve as mental anchors to organize the spellings of a specific sound.

For review, we begin with,

“What is the Key Sentence for the /oa/ sound?…Something about a boat…?”

Yes!

‘Go home to show the boat to Joe.’”

This frequent, but brief, quizzing challenges the students’ memory to retrieve the spellings they are working on. 

Frequent, staggered retrieval challenges are the fastest way to store information in long-term memory. 

The Key Sentence also provides a way to chunk the information down to even smaller bits – just the trigger of a boat may be what unlocks the sentence –and then the key spellings.

In addition, the organization of the 2-rowed columns serves as another scaffold, or mental framework for children to hook their learning to.

In the context of Sort It, a student may file away, say, the /oa/ sound as a folder with multiple folders within it.  

Similarly, when she comes across the /ee/ sound and its most frequent spellings, she will file away the /ee/ sound in one cognitive file with these spellings:

e ea ie ee y e_e

within it.

Drawers showing various advanced code sounds e.g. /oa/ and /ee/

The order and logic of connecting the sounds that the child already knows with all the main spellings of that sound at the same time in a graphic organizer spurs her learning.

Teachers do this type of organizing and sorting of information all the time for their students.  

For instance, in math, children are often guided to learn how to add or multiply all the 2’s for one period of time. 

Most math teachers don’t teach 2+3 on Monday and 4+5 on Tuesday.  😉  

And, they often show images or charts that demonstrate 2 plus anything in a visual way.

Or, in science, students learn about the solar system all at once.  

Teachers reveal all the 8 (or is it 9 again?) planets that revolve around our sun…all at once.  

They show diagrams of how all the planets relate to one another and to the sun.

As teachers, we know – organizing information is essential for teaching complex concepts.

So, I don’t know why we so often ignore (or at best only gradually reveal) the natural order of our written code – that it springboards from sounds, and that these sounds connect to several specific spellings.

Through these 2 techniques of a graphic organizer and the Key Sentence mnemonics, the new or struggling learner is given a mental filing and retrieval system that tends to facilitate faster learning of phonics knowledge.

Interested in seeing how Sort It might look in a small group setting? 

See the video below for an example with 1st graders in their 2nd encounter of Sort It:

Example Weekly Lesson Plan for Sort It

In addition to using Sort it, there are various ways to practice and enhance learning of the target sound each week. 

Here are three ideas for using Sort It as a recurring activity—simple tasks to integrate into your week to reinforce or expand the lessons.

  1. Use Sort It 2-4 times in one week, with different words
  2. Read texts that incorporate all the spellings of the target sound, such as the page “Joe and Joan” below.
  3. Sprinkle in other activities to reinforce the spelling, reading, and writing of the target sound.
Joe and Joan decodable text

One easy “other activity” is Search for It: read a text with the target sound, as in the above. 

Then, after the whole text has been read and discussed for comprehension, have the students search for each spelling of the target sound and circle those spellings.  

If time allows, they may also add those words to a Sort It page for extra practice.

They may want to create their own sort it notebook and continue to add more words from different stories. 

I know that the creativity of teachers allows for almost limitless possibilities for the “other activities.” 

Just keep trying to tie any creative idea you have back to the graphic organizer of the Sort It page and encourage children to rely on the Key Sentence.  

Also, the more often the students write and say the sounds as they write them, the faster they will learn. 

There are times for just reading or for just sorting, but they accomplish slightly less than when handwriting is involved.

After a week with the /oa/ sound, I often move on to the /ee/ sound, but I set aside some time to review the work of the previous week.  

Also, if students haven’t mastered all 5 or 7 spellings of a given sound by the end of the week, but they have most of them learned, that’s fine. 

Keep plugging ahead and reviewing.

Here’s how you might structure a week with Sort It:

  • Days 1-2: Use Sort It with the target sound and different words.

  • Day 3: Try Search for It, where students locate the sound in a reading passage and organize the sound spellings on the classroom whiteboard. If time allows have them add those sounds to their Sort It notebook.

  • Day 4: Using their Sort It sheet or notebook, practice writing sentences with the target sound spellings. If they’re doing this independently, have them share their sentences with a friend. 

  • Day 5: Review the Key Sentence and play a spelling game to reinforce the week’s learning.

This plan offers variety, plenty of practice and can easily be incorporated into another curriculum when necessary. 

Then, the following week – confidently move on to the next target sound.

– They’ll be ready.

Advanced Phonics & Common Core Standards

The best part of Sort it –

You’re integrating multiple CCSS simultaneously—with 1 phonics activity.

As I’ve written about previously and recently here, integration is the key.

We aim to save instructional time by hitting multiple reading sub-skills and multiple standards simultaneously.  

If you adopt Sort It, you’ll address essential literacy standards and build a foundation for fluent reading.

These are the Common Core State Standards you’ll address: 

Kindergarten

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.K.1.B
Recognize that spoken words are represented in written language by specific sequences of letters.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.K.1.D
Recognize and name all upper- and lowercase letters of the alphabet.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.K.2.B
Count, pronounce, blend, and segment syllables in spoken words.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.K.3.A
Demonstrate basic knowledge of one-to-one letter-sound correspondences by producing the primary sound or many of the most frequent sounds for each consonant.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.K.3.B
Associate the long and short sounds with the common spellings (graphemes) for the five major vowels.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.K.3.D
Distinguish between similarly spelled words by identifying the sounds of the letters that differ.

1st Grade

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.1.2.A
Distinguish long from short vowel sounds in spoken single-syllable words.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.1.2.B
Orally produce single-syllable words by blending sounds (phonemes), including consonant blends.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.1.2.C
Isolate and pronounce initial, medial vowel, and final sounds (phonemes) in spoken single-syllable words.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.1.2.D
Segment spoken single-syllable words into their complete sequence of individual sounds (phonemes).

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.1.3.A
Know the spelling-sound correspondences for common consonant digraphs.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.1.3.B
Decode regularly spelled one-syllable words.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.1.3.C
Know final -e and common vowel team conventions for representing long vowel sounds.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.1.3.E
Decode two-syllable words following basic patterns by breaking the words into syllables.  (When students reach this level, after learning about 3-5 of the most frequent sounds, they begin to Write and Say in Chunks, rather than by individual phonemes.)

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.1.3.F
Read words with inflectional endings.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.1.4.C
Use context to confirm or self-correct word recognition and understanding, rereading as necessary.

2nd Grade

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.2.3.A
Distinguish long and short vowels when reading regularly spelled one-syllable words.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.2.3.B
Know spelling-sound correspondences for additional common vowel teams.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.2.3.C
Decode regularly spelled two-syllable words with long vowels.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.2.3.D
Decode words with common prefixes and suffixes.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.2.3.E
Identify words with inconsistent but common spelling-sound correspondences.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.2.4.C
Use context to confirm or self-correct word recognition and understanding, rereading as necessary.

Whew! I hope you can see how much Sort It can accomplish. 

And, if it becomes the linchpin of your decoding element, then many more standards can be met simply by guiding a student to read a text of a targeted sound and by implementing other enrichment activities that link back to the core Sort It organizer.

This may be all you need to get moving with an activity to power up your phonics instruction.

But, 

👉🏽 if you want a little more info about what Sort It might look like 5-8 weeks down the road, and

👉🏽 you want to hear what other thought leaders have to say about this idea of simultaneity vs. isolation – keep reading.

Master Phonics Without Teaching Every Rule!

Some of us love flexibility. 

Some…not so much.

If you like to follow a program by-the-book, step-by-step, and never veer, then please take a slow breath and consider another way.

All of the Advanced Phonics combinations do NOT have to be taught explicitly.

Whaaaaat? I know some of you are thinking this…

Yes, I know that all the influential reading research reviews have clearly demonstrated the value of systematic, explicit instruction of phonics. 

(See Jeanne’s Chall classic 1967 review, or Marilyn Jager Adams’ Beginning to Read from 1990, or Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children from 1998, or the report of the National Reading Panel in 2000.)

The Sort It activity as I described above is explicit–although the student discovers a lot of the knowledge for herself in the context of a teacher-created situation and corrective feedback. 

I also recommend a systematic approach.

While research indicates the significance of systematic instruction of phonics information, there’s no particular sequence that has clear research preference. So, I adopted the following order of teaching Advanced Phonics which is ordered, in general, by frequency of spelling pattern.

/oa/:   o o_e oa ow oe

/ee/:   e ee y e_e ie ea

/ay/:  a_e ay eigh ai a

/i_e/:  i i_e igh ie

/oo/:  u_e o oo ew ue oe

/er/:   er ir ur ear or ar

/ow/:  ow ou

/aw/:  aw au ough al

/oy/:  oy oi

Each week a new sound is presented while the previous week’s instruction is reviewed.

HOWEVER, the research on “systematic” and “explicit” does NOT prove that every letter-sound must be taught in the classroom. 

Rather, the best prevailing theory of word identification learning developed by David Share suggests that children need only sufficient phonemic awareness and sufficient phonics knowledge to be able to discover the rest of the code by themselves, in the context of real reading.

Thus, we systematically and explicitly guide students to learn most of the code, especially the most frequent spellings.

Boost Fluency with the Self-Teaching Hypothesis

We also guide students to develop the cognitive flexibility, or set for variability, to make intelligent guesses for unknown spellings in words.

In other words, when the child encounters the word, “cloud,” but reads it first as “clode,” she will:

  1. Recognize that “clode” is not a valid word.
  2. Identify the part of the word where the error likely occurred.
  3. Substitute the /ow/ sound as a possible alternative.
  4. Confirm that “cloud” makes sense in the sentence.

Share terms this theory of how children learn to decode the “self-teaching hypothesis” of word learning and also involves a “set for variability.”

Research and theory suggest that students do not need every bit of phonics information explicitly taught to them. 

Rather, they need just enough knowledge of the code and skill in attacking it to independently learn new spellings occasionally when they encounter them.  

Given sufficient knowledge and skills, the young reader “self-teaches” herself the one aspect of a word that she has previously not learned.

I remember so clearly my experience as a young student. 

I came across the word, “pterodactyl.” 

I was at first completely surprised to see a “pt” at the beginning of the word because it is such a rare spelling.

I was pretty sure no one had taught me that spelling.  

However – somewhere in the dark reaches of my mind – I must have heard the word /ter uh dak til/ before.

Because I hesitatingly guessed that the word must be /ter o dak til/ and the “pt” must indicate the /t/ sound.  

I used my:

– To determine that the one piece of information I was completely unaware of was likely the sound /t/. 

image of pterodactyls flying through the air

No one ever explicitly taught me that “pt” could be /t/ at the beginning of some words of Greek origin.  

But by the time I had seen and heard “pteradactyl” a couple of times, I was pretty sure that “pteranodon” was /ter an a don/ when I next ran across it…on my own.

That’s an example of the self-teaching hypothesis of word learning in action.

Why does a deep dive into word learning theories even matter?

Because we want to ease the burden you may be under using a systematic, explicit phonics program.

You simply DON’T have to overwhelm your students with every single advanced phonics combination.

This break from overkill is in keeping with our mission at Reading Simplified!

We streamline the process of teaching so you can catch a break, AND still  accelerate your students’ reading achievement.  

Although there are over 250 spellings, I don’t actually ever teach anyone all of them…

(And, even though you may be desperately trying to – Do you?

…Get through all of them?)

Yet my students regularly read well over grade level and I witness them figuring out sound-symbol connections of information they haven’t been taught. 

(And most of my students for the last 15 years have been identified as struggling, learning disabled, or dyslexic, so please don’t think I’m just talking about reaching the top 50-75% of our children. I’m talking about reaching everyone with this general theory of word learning.)

I use clear procedures, a systematic plan, clear teacher talk and error correction to support students in learning a sufficient amount of the code (see list of the order of Advanced Phonics sounds we teach above). 

Then I ensure they read aloud…a lot…

…With adult support and/or by following along to narrated texts, so that they put their developing skills into play for themselves.  

Unfamiliar spellings are encountered rarely – they’re rare – remember that. 😉 

Students have 95% or more of the information they need to be able to attack an unfamiliar word independently. 

[This assumes that they’ve developed the cognitive flexibility and strong decoding strategies that we teach through activities such as Switch It and the pivotal decoding strategy Flex It .]

In the context of real reading, students can figure most of the remaining elements of the code out for themselves. 

And we all can spend more time reading real books together, rather than working on worksheets or isolated word work.

Even as adult readers —that’s how we are still operating. 

If we come to an unknown word, we try various sounds for the part of the word we don’t recognize.

Understanding the connection between speech and print is vital for literacy development. 

For further insights on this topic, check out our blog on Speech to Print: Logical Literacy.

How would you say this word:

eschatology

Is it /es kuh tol u gee/?

Or is it /es chuh tol u gee/?  

(It means study of the end times.)

We try both sounds and see which one sounds closest to a word we might have heard.

We DON’T think about a phonics rule to determine that it’s the /k/ and not /ch/ sound.  

We want our students to have these same decoding skills, sufficient phonics knowledge, and flexible approach to attacking unknown words. 

Sort It is one of the main tools we use to ensure our students rapidly acquire sufficient phonics knowledge while always also reading for meaningful words.

Like Switch It, Sort It is an evidence-based way to phonemically analyze words and support orthographic mapping for reading and spelling.

Dr. Kerry Hempenstall, 

“Phonemic analysis training will improve spelling for all spellers even without drill on conventional spellings.” and “Phonological decoding skill (sounding out) has the largest influence on spelling ability.”

- Hempenstall, 2018

He goes on to write that this instruction should be explicit and systematic:

Explicitly and systematically means?

  • teach children to manipulate phonemes using letters,
  • focus the instruction on segmenting & blending, rather than multiple activities
  • teach children in small groups.
  • Incorporate feedback, and massed and spaced practice.

-Hempenstall, 2018

Here at Reading Simplified we wholeheartedly agree with these precepts. Clearly, teaching the code through manipulation of letters with blending and segmenting is essential.

Yet covering every phonics pattern or learning phonics spellings in isolation is clearly missing from this summary of explicit and systematic reading instruction. 

Let’s dig in to see how this streamlined approach not only works but saves time….

Streamline Your Phonics Instruction with Sort It and Save Time

If you organize your phonics instruction around the organizational tool of Sort It, you’ll not only boost students’ learning speed, you may also find it simplifies differentiation.

When organizing instruction around sounds, there are only a handful of key sounds you need to cover, such as these higher frequency ones: /oa/, /ee/, /ay/ /i_e/, /oo/, /er/, /ow/, /oi/, /aw/. 

1st Grade Streamlined Pathway

Say one group of students knows most of the spellings of 4 of these sounds (i.e., /oa/, /ee/, /ay/, and /i_e/), go ahead and advance them to the 5th sound (i.e., /er/).  

Then, have that subset of children:

➡️ sort and map /er/ sound words,

➡️read /er/ sound texts, 

➡️ search for /er/ sound spellings, 

➡️ write /er/ sound sentences, etc.

On the other hand, another group of students may just be starting to learn Advanced Phonics this way. 

With this group, you will do very similar activities; however, you’ll focus on the /oa/ sound as the target.

Thus, have this other group of students:

➡️ sort and map /oa/ sound words,

➡️ read /oa/ sound texts, 

➡️ search for /oa/ sound spellings, 

➡️ write /oa/ sound sentences,

And so on for each of the 4 to 6 groups of students you have in your class:

They are somewhere on the Streamlined Pathway to learn these few sounds and their various spellings, and you move them up as soon as they have had about 1 week of instruction on a given sound. 

So what about teaching phonics whole group?

If that’s your mandate, it’s unfortunate and not based on my read of current research (but that’s for another post).

However, you can tackle this challenge in a couple of ways and still release much more phonics info – in an organized way – quickly.

One option for whole-class Sort It instruction would be to keep the whole class moving together, learning one sound at a time. 

Yet you could still differentiate by giving students one of 4 different Sort It word lists that increase in difficulty. That is, those reading at the kindergarten reading level could be given a kindergarten Sort It activity page while those reading at the 4th/5th grade reading level could be given a 4th/5th grade Sort It page. 

See the examples below of the 4 different levels of words that we provide inside the Reading Simplified Academy for the /er/ sound:

Sort It /er/ sound Pre K, 1st Grade, 2nd-3rd Grade, 4th-5th Grade

With this approach, most classes could teach the bulk of high frequency advanced phonics spellings in as little as 11 weeks!

What if you have a mandated curriculum and you can’t imagine how to fit this type of instruction into that context?

I got you!

 – you can still simply assess your students with this sound-based framework and distribute students to small groups or independent work that’s centered on their next un-mastered target sound and the Sort It framework.

In sum, we hope you are intrigued by the potential efficiencies you and your students might gain through an activity such as Sort It.

Based on past experiences, I expect that your students will gain several things,

  1. A better understanding of how our code works (i.e., one sound–/oa/–can have multiple spellings–o, o_e, ow, oa, oe),
  2. Faster acquisition of Advanced Phonics knowledge,
  3. Better ability to decode unfamiliar words,
  4. Faster development of high-frequency word knowledge, and
  5. Improved fluency.

You, in turn, may benefit from:

  1. Easier planning,
  2. More effective differentiation,
  3. Better phonics assessment,
  4. Less stress, and
  5. (Perhaps) less time working on school stuff! Yeah!!

Your Turn!

I’d love to hear if you’ve tried Sort It or something similar. What results have you seen, and does it make a difference in your classroom? 😊