Lay out a playing card design on your computer. Make it fun and colorful to catch the students' attention.
Design and print 13 sets of four cards with a phonics sound you have recently taught.
Make color copies of the cards on card stock so you have enough for each group of students. If there are 20 students in the class, you will need five sets of cards.
Ask the children to gather into groups of four. Give each group a set of pre-shuffled cards.
Help the children deal the cards. Each student will be dealt five cards.
Place the rest of the cards in a stack face down on the table.
Have the first child ask another child for a specific sound that is on a card in his hand. The other child will either hand over the card if he is holding it or tell the child to "Go Fish" where he will have to draw a card from the stack.
Instruct the students to collect all four cards that have the same sound, which creates a "book." Lay each book on the table.
Let the children play by taking turns asking for cards until a student in the group of four runs out of cards in his hand or the stack of cards on the table runs out.
Name the student with the most books the winner.
Have each student go over the sounds in the books that she has collected. Instruct the student to recite the phonics sound and put it into a word.