Digital Rainbow Mixed Blends Phonics Activity
Are your students working on mixed blends this spring? Add to the literacy learning fun with this digital rainbow mixed blends activity.
Rainbow Mixed Blends Activity
As the year goes on, students learn more and more phonics skills to add to their literacy tool belt. Beginning and ending blends are one of those skills that students will master as they continue on their journey to learning to read.
After students have mastered beginning and ending sounds and are working on CVC words, it’s time to introduce beginning and ending blends.
This digital rainbow mixed blends activity is the perfect way for students to start practicing blending without getting overwhelmed. This activity is developmentally appropriate for students in kindergarten, first, and even second-grade. This activity is the perfect way to move students from beginning phonics skills to consonant blends and then digraphs.
As they play, students will have several opportunities to blend and decode words as they apply their phonemic awareness skills. They’ll work with words using all of the short vowel sounds and these blends:
- fr
- st
- sl
- dr
- fl
- sw
- nd
- mp
- nt
- lk
If your students are learning in the classroom or at home, this digital rainbow mixed blends activity is the perfect way to practice without needing worksheets and activities that require printing. It’s easy prep in the fact that you just need to get it set up on your students’ devices and then you’re ready to go.
Setting Up the Rainbow Mixed Blends Activity in Google Slides
Students may use Google Slides™ to do this activity.
The download file includes a detailed guide with instructions and pictures on how to use this activity with your students, but it is quite simple to do.
If you are a instructor or teacher, you will want to copy the Google Slides assignment to your Google Drive and save it as a master copy.
Make sure that you click the dropdown next to the attachment. Pick the “Make a copy for each student” option.
Setting Up the Rainbow Word Building Activity in Seesaw
Students can also use this activity in Seesaw, if you would like.
You will click the Seesaw specific link in the download file. When you arrive at the activity, you will need to click the “Save Activity” button. Then you will assign the activity to your students.
Mastering Mixed Blends
Whether it’s spring or any time of year, your students will love the rainbow-theme this activity brings. Plus, since this activity is digital, students will be highly engaged and still have a hands-on activity element with the drag and drop directions.
To play, students will look at the picture on each rainbow slide. They’ll determine what word the picture represents. They’ll look at the bank of letters and blends, putting them in order to build the word. Each slide has 1 blend and 2 letters for the students to use to build the 4 letter word. They must also determine if the blend goes at the beginning or the end. The boxes on the screen give the students a little hint as to where the blend belongs. This will be helpful for students just starting out with this literacy skill.
This activity has 13 different slides, giving students many opportunities to practice building words with mixed blends and letters. 7 slides focus on beginning blends and 6 focus on ending blends. As students build these words, they’ll broaden their vocabulary and add to their list of “words I know.”
Differentiated Rainbow Word Building
Working on beginning and ending blends can be a tricky skill. You may have students ready to take off with it while others may need more support. This rainbow mixed blends activity can easily be differentiated to meet the needs of all of your students.
You can use these digital word building mats as a whole group practice activity after a lesson or during your small groups or literacy centers. You can even group your students by level and assign slides accordingly.
Here are some different ways in which you can differentiate this rainbow mixed blends word building activity:
- Assign fewer slides to make it a bit easier.
- Challenge students to complete all slides if they’re ready.
- Target certain short vowel words by assigning certain slides.
- Focus on either beginning or ending blends by assigning certain slides.
- Mix up the beginning and ending blend word slides for a challenge.
- Have students point to each blend and sound as they say it, sliding their finger across the word to blend the sounds.
- Have students who are ready for more of a challenge write a sentence using the word and sight words.
- Identify a rhyming word.
- Tell the word family.
However your students practice with this activity, I am confident that their beginning and ending blends skills will grow and they’ll be more confident readers in no time.
If you’re looking for more hands-on, engaging activities to use with your students, check out these digital activities and add them to your lesson plans!
Click the button below to get the Digital Rainbow Mixed Blends Word Building activity for Google Slides and Seesaw.
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