Tape squares of paper, with letters printed on them, to the backs of chairs set up in a circle. Make sure you have one for each of the children in your reading group. Similar to musical chairs, have the children walk around the chairs while you play a piece of music; however, unlike musical chairs, each child sits down when the music stops. When all of the children are seated, have each child look at the letter on her chair. Say the letter sound that you are looking for. The child with that letter tapes it to the whiteboard and returns to the group with a new letter to tape to her chair. Try to arrange the letters so that after three or four rounds, a word is on the whiteboard. Offer a treat or special privilege to the student who can read the word.
Set up 10 pictures of animals and 10 letter cards corresponding to the initial sounds of the animal names. Do not place the letters with the corresponding animals. Your students will match them. Ask for a volunteer in your reading group. Give the student a letter and instruct her to find the corresponding animal. For example, if you give her a "d" she would pick up the picture of a dog. Have her act out her animal for the class to guess, and then have the class guess the letter that goes with the animal. Repeat with the other letters as long as your group is having fun.
Challenge your class to create letters using something that makes the letter sound. For example, a student might make the letter "d" out of dough and write the letter "p" with a pink crayon. Keep the set of practice letters small so that you know there is a corresponding option to use in the creation of each letter. Extra creative students might expand on the lesson with ideas such as an "f" made of fries.
Have students work in groups of four. Give each group a plastic zip bag filled with colored beads and five or six small toy animals with easily identifiable initial letter sounds. Challenge each student to find all of the animals and determine what letter each of them starts with. Provide each group with a worksheet that shows a picture of each animal and a blank line on which to write the letter corresponding to the initial sound. Working together allows students to challenge each other to excel and encourages students to help each other identify more difficult sounds.