Phonics Books for the Classroom

 Every class is different and this year, I have a group of kids that LOVE reading, but many of them do not have books.  My team gives kids a reading log with their homework, so after I received a few notes from parents, I needed to come up with a solution.

I started thinking about how to solve this problem.  I LOVE Reading A to Z, but I use many of those books for my small groups, so I wanted to save those for my classroom.

I looked at several sites online, but many of the books were too hard, too short, or didn't have a rhyme or reason to them.  The more I looked, the more I felt like what I wanted didn't exist.  So, that's when I decided to start a new adventure and start writing my own books.

Since it's the beginning of first grade, I decided to start with short vowel mini books.  Each set of books has word lists at the beginning.  One of the lists has all of the short vowel words.  For example, if the book is a short a book, then all of the short a words that were used is listed.  The next word list has sight words.  Many of these words will be found on Fry lists, Dolch lists, etc.  This allows your students or child to not only practice a specific short vowel sound, but to also work on sight words.

After the word lists, there are five page stories.  These stories have black and white pictures so that your students can color the books or you can reuse them over and over.  On the back of the book, there are four questions about that book.  These are meant to be asked orally.  This page allows your parents to check comprehension.

For my own kids, I really wanted to come up with something that they could keep and that would allow them to practice the skills that we are practicing at school daily.  All of the books also have the grade equivalency, DRA levels, and Guided Reading levels.  I am aligning the books to our phonics skill of the week so that I can make sure that not only are my kids getting plenty of practice at school, but they are also getting practice at home.  I'm hoping this will help some of my students that may struggle a little with reading build their confidence and their reading fluency.  While my kids are using them with their homework, they would also be great to use with small groups.

Also, I know that time management really matters.  I tried to make sure that these books require very little work to assemble.  There are two versions - a classroom version and a homeschool version.  The classroom version is set up so that when you print the book, you immediately get two copies of that specific book.  The homeschool version is set up so that when you print, you get two copies of different books.  Once you've printed the books front and back all that's left is stapling and cutting them down the middle.

In case you still aren't sure this is what you need, here is a free book below.  Just click on the image to download it.  This was created out of a need I had, so I want you to have the opportunity to make sure this also fits your needs.

Hope you enjoy!