Anna-Marie B

Phonics Play

 

Phonics Play is a brilliant resource used within the school I am currently at in order to help embed the children's learning of particular phonemes. As a Year 1 teacher at the minute we have to carry out a daily Phonics lesson for 20 minutes each day. These lessons vary from covering simple sounds such as 'oo' and 'ew' to the more tricky like 'ph' and the dreaded split diagraph 'a_e'. However with a resource like Phonics Play at your fingertips the children can quickly and easily show you how well, or not, they have grasped a particular sound.

 

In particular the chidlren love playing Buried Treasure on Phonics Play in which they have to decipher the words on the coin into real and fake. The coin shows the children a word and they have to use their blending skills in order to decipher it and work out if it if a made up word or a real one. If it is real they have to move it across to the treasure chest and if it is fake it goes in the trash can. The children particularly love it when the pirate comes up and dances when you have selected the right choice.

To make it more fun the children could be split into boys and girls and they have to compete to see who can win the most coins for their team so although the children are playing between themselves they are still learning at the same time. It is easy to dismay such activities as they don't seem, on paper, to record how well the children is performing in relation to their understanding of the phonemes but I believe that games like these embed the child's knowledge and learning. Miller & Robertson (2009) found that children who carried out learning on a game console or related piece of software were much more likely to improve in speed and accuracy of the learning being carried out. As a result of such findings it is apparent how useful a tool like this can be, especially in preparation for the Phonics Screening Test at the end of Year 1 in which children have to decide whether the words shown to them are alien or real, so if a game can help them achieve better results I feel it should be encouraged.

 

 

Here are some images of Buried Treasure:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Miller, D.J., & Robertson, D. P, 2009. Using a games console in the primary classroom: Effects of 'Brain-Training' programme on computation and self-esteem. Britich Journal of Educational Technology, 41, 242-255