Welcome to My Play Based Classroom Blog
Hi there!
I'm Janelle - a play-based early years teacher who is super passionate about creating learning experiences that boost curiosity, creativity, and academic growth.
On this blog, I share practical tips for meeting curriculum benchmarks through a balance of explicit teaching and play, setting up the ideal learning environment and fostering social-emotional development.
So, let’s make play-based teaching work in your preschool, kindergarten, or first-grade classroom!
21 Activities for Teaching Phoneme Manipulation
Discover why we have to spend so much time teaching phoneme manipulation in kindergarten and get 21 engaging and effective classroom activities to help your students manipulate sounds with ease!
11 Teaching Tips to Overcome Word Segmenting Difficulties in Kids
Teaching word segmenting can be tricky, especially for kids who are just starting to grasp phonemic awareness. Effective strategies and the right instruction play a significant role in helping children overcome word segmenting difficulties. In this blog post, I share 11 practical teaching tips that will make a difference to your student's ability to hear and segment the individual sounds in words.
What is Phoneme Segmentation?
Discover what the phonemic awareness skill of phoneme segmentation is and why it is so important for learning to read and write. Learn how to effectively teach this skill according to the science of reading research.
22 Phoneme Segmentation Activities for Phonemic Awareness
Segmenting phonemes is an important phonemic awareness skill. Use my 22 tried and tested phoneme segmentation activities and download the free phoneme segmentation word list to teach your kindergarten and first-grade students how to segment words into phonemes.
22 Word Awareness Activities to Develop Phonological Awareness
Discover engaging word awareness activities, teaching tips and strategies for this basic phonological awareness skill. This blog post is a practical guide to developing word awareness through 22 playful, hands-on strategies and activities. Perfect for kindergarten, preschool, and first-grade teachers looking to teach the concept of a word.
9 Practical Sound Discrimination Activities - Fun and Easy
Sound discrimination activities are important phonemic awareness activities. They will teach your students to listen and really pay attention. In this blog post, discover nine practical auditory discrimination games and activities for your kindergarten and preschool classroom.
12 Effective Strategies for Teaching Phonemic Awareness
Looking for the most effective strategies for teaching phonemic awareness? Discover how to get your students to reach their reading benchmarks and have success learning to read and write in this blog post. Hint: You’ll need to know the latest Science of Reading research and use it to effectively teach phonemic awareness to your kids!
Fun Phoneme Blending Activities - Build Phonemic Awareness
Discover my tried and tested phoneme blending activities in this blog post. Build phonemic awareness and find out why learning to blend sounds is such an important phonemic awareness skill.
How to Teach Phonemic Awareness - Tips and Activities
Learn how to teach phonemic awareness effectively and enhance early reading skills. In this blog post you’ll get strategies and activities for isolating, blending, and segmenting phonemes to use with your young students.
Teaching Phonological Awareness and Phonemic Awareness
Discover essential strategies for teaching phonological and phonemic awareness in early childhood education. This guide outlines the developmental stages and suggests practical teaching ideas and engaging activities to develop these important early literacy skills in preschool and kindergarten children.