The Phonics Dance!


I have had a few questions about the phonics song that you hear in my Day in the Life of a 2nd Grader video so I am going to post a bit about The Phonics Dance!  Now it is not mine, but I have been dancing it for at least 8 years.  When I first did the training,  I was teaching first grade and it fit perfectly into my literacy program.  Ginny Dowd the founder and creator presented to us in a small hotel conference room.  She was such a breath of fresh air and totally just a teacher.  Like me!  I connected instantly with her and have been using her teaching strategies ever since.

The picture above shows my Phonics Dance board.  This is where we keep our Chunks after they are introduced.  We dance every chunk...everyday!  I have a pretty magic wand that I mount at the bottom of the board.  Each chunk was purchased from The Phonics Dance. I started with the black and white ones and colored them.  I mounted them on colored card-stock and laminated them.  Eventually, I moved to the beautiful colored ones you see in the picture.  I also have The Phonics Dance alphabet posted around the room.  When you purchase the manual to go with the cards you will receive the chants.  Please do not worry if you don't get them perfect.  It takes a lot to memorize them.  They offer a CD as well.  I just went with it and made them my own.  It is fun to learn them with your class...the students love to add their own take.  

Another good idea to help with learning the chants is to print them on the back of the cards.  As you show the card to present them you can check the chant on the back.  (You will get all of the chants when you order The Phonics Dance book!)

To introduce the dance, I start with our Magic Sprinkles...just some fun cake sprinkles.  I use my wand to put a spell on the sprinkles.  This is the best part!  You can find more information about this in The Phonics Dance manual.  I HIGHLY recommend this book! 
Be sure that once you introduce a chunk...you dance it EVERY DAY!

Like I said,  I taught first grade when I first began using the dance. I so excited to get it started!  I wanted to begin right away but first graders take a bit longer to learn the routine...so one thing  I did to get us going the first week was to learn the ABC chants and also work on my What's My Ending Packet.  I used the same format as The Phonics Dance I just made it with basic word families.  It is a great review for students and also gets them ready to start The Phonics Dance.  

Download a copy of a basic week of at, it, ot, ut, and et families.  Feel free to edit the file if your crew of kiddos need more practice with word families.  I usually only do this for a week and jump right into The Phonics Dance. 
Another thing that I have done is to create a powerpoint of the Chunks.  I wanted to save on paper and when I moved to 2nd grade I felt like my class had a good understanding of basic phonics so we did the pages for each Chunk together on our SMARTboard.  
I had my students record the chants for each chunk and I linked them to each chunk image on the slides.  The next slide I added The Phonics Dance page.  
 When I introduce this Chunk...we look at the picture clue and write the letter sounds phonetically.  Then I write the word spelled correctly and we Hunk and Chunk.  Hunk is a word inside a word and "sh" is the Chunk.  In my class we underline the Hunk and circle the Chunk. We also give our E some magic with a star and underline our blends with a squiggle line. By doing all of this we are training our eyes to look for parts of words that we recognize.  WORD ATTACK!
Before we go through the phonics page we sing We Will Hunk and Chunk it...to the tune of We Will Rock You!  It is a great movement activity.  


In 2nd grade we also Hunk and Chunk poems for our poetry journals.  This is a great way to practice our word attack strategy.  I promise that if you start training your students to look at words The Phonics Dance way you will see some amazing readers and writers develop.  Just promise that when you do the dance...you do it loud and proud!






17 comments

  1. I am going to the Phonics Dance training next week! I can't wait. It looks wonderful.

    Becca
    Simply 2nd Resources

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  2. I am wondering how to insert a link to something I want to share on my blog. Can you please help?

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  3. I can't believe you did a posting on this. I have this stored under my "things for next year" file so I could research it more for my second grade class. Just tonight I was also looking at a phonics book mentioned on another blog that looked really good. I was torn. I think your post is a sign which one would be best for me and my darlings. Thanks for the great explanation!!

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  4. Thanks for posting more information. I'm definitely going to buy the program. What are the "essential" things I should buy? I was thinking the manual, CD and the chunk cards. Is that all?
    Just Add Clipart

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  5. Ginny came to my school and did the training at the end of the school year. I am a Kindergarten teacher and can't wait to try it out this year!

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  6. I just went to this training two weeks ago! My corporation had Ginny come & do a training with us. I am excited about implementing this with my first graders this all. I haven't had time to dive right into it to prep for next year....I've been a bit overwhelmed with my masters work, but will be done in about 6 days. So looking forward to the planning!!

    Primary Inspired

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  7. Yay! I am going to the workshop in a couple of weeks! Glad to hear that you have had success with it! :)

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  8. Stacey...I would love to help you with your link but I am not sure how to contact you. Send my an email at schroederpage@gmail.com:)

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  9. Love it, love it, love it! I started doing it this past year and my kiddos enjoyed it. It was a big help for my struggling readers and I saw a huge jump in spelling too!

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  10. This looks amazing - I can only imagine how much it will help my kids! How much time do you dedicate to this each day? Thanks so much for sharing! I think I need to buy it!!

    msalleysclass.blogspot.com

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  11. This looks GREAT!! Thank you for sharing:) I am your newest follower:) Awesome blog!!

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  12. Thank you for sharing. It was adorable to hear your students singing the phonics song.

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  13. I'm so glad you blogged about this! I purchased the book and cd last year, but have been nervous about trying it out since I haven't been to a training. I appreciate you encouraging us to just go for it! I think that's what I'm going to do! I'm excited now!

    Once Upon A First Grade Adventure

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  14. Ok so I followed through and ordered it, which I am super excited about, but if anyone has any suggestions on how they fit it into their schedule please let me know at msalleysclass.blogspot.com. Thanks!!

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  15. Is the book, and cd all you need to do the phonics dance? What do you suggest to get started?

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  16. Could you share your Phonic Dance slides?

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  17. Are your power points for sale? I'm. Looking forward to going to this training!!

    mwilson@frenship.us

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Extra, extra tell Mrs. Schroeder about it!