Hard and Soft Sounds of C and G Shortly after students learn the letters and sounds of the alphabet we teach them that the vowels and several consonants actually have two sounds. The consonants “c” and “g” are two of the letters that make different sounds depending on the letters that follow them in the word. Learning and teaching hard and soft sounds of c and g can be tricky, but these activities are sure to be a hit! Soft and Hard G The most common sound for the “g” is the “hard” sound as in the word “goat”.  However, if the “g” is followed by an i, e or y it makes the “soft” /j/ sound as in the

St. Patrick’s Day Games! Emmett and Eleanor absolutely love these St. Patrick’s Day games for learning and practicing sight words and targeted phonics skills! I just love these games too! They are fast paced and offer tons and tons of opportunities to read words. Not only do we have the Lucky You! activity for the Dolch sight words we have the activity for early phonics skills such as CVC Words, Magic e, and R Controlled Vowels. The Lucky You! games are ideal for either your small group instruction or as an activity in your literacy centers during the month of March. The games are super simple to assemble. Just print the cards single-sided to double-sided then cut along the dotted

Teaching the FLOSS Spelling Rule Teaching the FLoSS spelling rule can be easy! Memory aids are often used to help students remember certain spelling rules. The FLoSS rule is one of the first spelling rules taught to our first and second grade students to help them understand when to double the final “f”, “l” and “s” consonants at the end of certain words.   The word “floss” actually follows the FLoSS rule.  When a /f/, /l/ /s/ (or /z/) is heard after a short vowel at the end of a one-syllable word, it is spelled with a double “ff”, “ll”, “ss” or “zz”.  Okay, you’re probably thinking how did that “z” sneak in there.  Well, there really aren’t too many words that end