Action Factor presents...

Sing Your Way Through Phonics

Sing Your Way Through Phonics is a 4-volume set of music CDs and visuals designed to reinforce the vital phonics knowledge that children need to become independent readers and writers. Through a variety of catchy folksongs, the entire scope and sequence of phonics skills are set to music, systematically arranged into four stages of phonics depth. The series begins at the pre-school/kindergarten level with phonemic awareness skills and moves on to cover letter/sound correspondence, spelling patterns, roots and affixes, syllabication, and much more.

Sing Your Way Through Phonics can offer a unique chance for music educators to become part of their school’s literacy team. By “partnering up” with primary grade teachers, music teachers are in the enviable position of bringing the element of fun into what might normally be dull phonics skill and drill. Snappy folk tunes help teachers harness the power of music to help children develop phonic knowledge to the point of automaticity—a necessary pre-requisite to reading comprehension.

Each phonics song is recorded in both vocal and instrumental form. Once children become familiar with the words, concepts, and melodies in the vocal recording, they can move on to the instrumental recording, substituting their own words for each phonics rule. For example, in the song “Spelling Families,” (Volume I), children can substitute the words hat, pat, and sat for the original words--cat, bat, and rat. Children enjoy the challenge of dividing up the songs into sections, singing in question-and-answer format, and assigning different groups to sing each section of the lyrics. When hand and body motions or rhythm instruments are added, learning is further enhanced because children are involving their whole bodies in the learning process.

Mini-Charts, teaching guides, and Read-and-Sing Books supplement the music CDs to help students make the vital connections between the sound of phonics and the visual print. As children sing the songs, they point to the target words or letter patterns on the 8.5” x 11” charts. Teaching Suggestions Booklets provide a basic lesson plan for teaching any of the songs and specific suggestions for instruction before, during, and after each individual song. These booklets also provide at least one complete new set of examples that can be substituted for the originals when using the instrumental version of the songs. Templates at the back of the Mini-Chart booklets can be duplicated and completed by students and teacher and placed in a 3-ring binder to perform songs with alternate examples. Sing Your Way Through Phonics Volume 1 is additionally supplemented by 11 Read-and-Sing Books where children can follow whimsical storybook characters as they illustrate each song’s phonics concept.

Children grow in both reading and writing skills with a solid foundation of phonics. Primary grade students respond so enthusiastically to Sing Your Way Through Phonics that they actually look forward to phonics practice. Music is a powerful tool—why not make it your teaching ally?