By the first grade, most students have already learned their alphabet and some are even reading. But you will find that some students have fallen behind the pack and are still struggling with the basics of phonics. For this reason, it is a good idea to begin the year with a review of phonics readiness. This is the process of getting children familiar with the different sounds made by letters and words. Some excellent phonics readiness activities include reading aloud to the students, playing rhyming games and exploring sound pictures (i.e. an angry dog says "rrr").
Begin your study of the alphabet with the short-sound vowels. Focus on the recognition, name and sound of each letter. Once the short-sound vowels have been mastered, skip ahead to the rest of the alphabet. Logically, it would seem that the long-sound vowels would come next, but at such a young age children are easily confused. You just spent the last several days teaching them vowel sounds only to turn around and tell them that those same letters make other sounds too. Give them a chance to get familiar with one sound per letter before introducing new sounds. Along those same lines, when introducing consonants that have two sounds (like c and g), introduce the hard sound first (c says "k" and g says "g").
One of the main benefits of beginning alphabet introduction with the vowels is that you can work on blending as soon as the students learn the first consonant. Since the students already know the short vowel sounds, blending can begin immediately. For example, if the first consonant you teach is "t," give the students time to get familiar with the name, recognition and sound of the letter "t". (It is important not to add an "uh" to the end of letter sounds as it makes things very difficult during the blending process. It's "ttt" not "tuh.") Once the students are comfortable with the letter "t," teach them how to blend it with the vowels: ta, te, ti, to, tu. Some students grasp this process right away while for others it takes time. Make the blending fun by singing songs or playing games. Practice having the students make blends by putting the appropriate letters together as well as having them tell you which letters they hear in the blend you say.
At this point, it is safe to introduce the long-sound vowels without fear of confusing the students. By now, they feel comfortable with their vowels sounds and are ready to learn more about them. The easiest way to teach long sounds is to simply inform the students that the long sound is the same as the name of the letter. This instruction usually goes very quickly since the students are already familiar with the letters' names and therefore their long sounds. To reinforce the new sounds, have the students go back through their blends using the long vowel sound instead of the short. This is also a good time to explain to students about the vowel rule: When a word only has one vowel, it usually says its short sound. When a word has two vowels, the first one says its name, and the second one is quiet. This rule is important for the introduction of reading and it also helps the students understand why the vowels make two sounds.
Teach the students to form words by adding another letter at the end of a blend. For example, if you are looking at the blend "ba," ask your students if they can think of a word that begins with "ba." Likely, someone will think of "bat." Ask the students what letter you would need to add to the end of "ba" to make the word "bat." You may have to really enunciate at the beginning of these lessons, but over time the students will develop a better ear for distinguishing letter sounds. Spend time daily working on both forming and reading words. Once students are comfortable with the process, begin combining the words into sentences. Don't worry about fluency or smoothness at this point. Just focus on getting the students to read the sentence as a whole instead of as individual words or sounds.
Chances are, at this point, some of your students are growing bored with simple words and sentences like "See Spot run." So it's time to introduce them to some new sounds. This is where you will teach about all the exceptions to the rules they've already learned. One at a time, introduce the soft "c" and "g," the consonant blends and digraphs (br, pl, ch, squ and so on), the r-controlled vowels (ar, er, ir, or and ur), suffixes, prefixes and other vowel patterns (ay, ei, ou and so on). This will be a long process of teaching and reviewing and it is likely that you will not be able to teach them all before the end of the year. That's fine. The important thing is to teach as many of them as possible in the time you have allotted to you. The more sounds the students are familiar with, the better they will be able to read and spell.
There are certain words in the English language that do not follow any rules at all and therefore cannot be sounded out. These are called sight words. Students must learn to recognize these words on sight. The best time to teach sight words is throughout the entire year. When the students learn their first letters, introduce them to common sight words like "the," "and" and "said." Constantly add a new word to the list of sight words you review daily. You'll be amazed at the number of words the students will have learned by the end of the year.