Elementary phonics aligned with the science of reading looks like tubs of manipulatives, sound box cards, pointers, poem posters, and dry erase boards with markers, and, and, and... :)

All. The. Things.

And then if you are going to do phonics intervention during small groups, you either need to have a separate stash, or you need to remember to move all the things back and forth.

But it doesn't have to be that way. Digital phonics changed my life for this very reason and more. So let's chat about the 4 Reasons I started teaching phonics DIGITALLY!

1. Digital Phonics Means No Prep

Don't get me wrong... I have my stash of phonics materials. But it's organized neatly in my small group intervention area.

I never worry about gathering all the things as my kids are rushing to the carpet. Or rushing to my back table to grab one more thing in the middle of the lesson!

Can you relate?

One of the things I love about digital phonics is that all of the manipulatives and supplies are digital and a part of the powerpoint file.

By making it digital, I don't have to sacrifice hands-on or the interactive experience that we know kids need to map words!

For decoding practice, the slides play one phoneme at a time.

Elkonin boxes are on the spelling pages.

There are plenty of sorts with moveable photos or words.

And there are plenty more interactive parts of the digital phonics lessons that you can see in this video.

2. Digital Phonics Means Putting Down Scripts

If you've been around for a while, you may know my story about getting stuck in the script and HATING it! I couldn't memorize the script that changed each day. And I also couldn't read from the script and teach effectively AND manage my squirrely first graders.

That's the exact reason I created digital phonics. Because I needed to look up and teach while still being confident that what I was doing was backed by the Science of Reading.

Having prepared slides helped me look up at my kids and focus on teaching them better.

Each of the slides has a notes section (in normal view) for me to refer to in case I forget what we are focusing on for that slide.

But I rarely had to glance at the notes section after the first week or so because of reason #3...

Digital Phonics Means Consistency

Consistency is HUGE for me.

And it's even HUGER for kids (Yes, I know that's not a word.... but it should be!)

Consistency in digital phonics instruction means that we are doing the same routine every week, just with a different skill.

Poems will always be introduced on Tuesdays for first graders. And we will do the same things with them each Tuesday... just with a different poem!

The content changes. The routines do not. And that's where the magic happens.

Kids have a finite amount of space in their brains to learn. If half of that space is used up learning new routines every day, then only half of their brain power is available for actual learning. Actual science of reading aligned phonics skills.

Let's pause for a story for a moment. When I interned in kindergarten, my mentor teacher (whom I LOVED) planned 10 centers every week. And they were different centers every week. Like we just found 10 random activities that tied into what we were learning that week.

On Mondays before centers began, we spent about 20 minutes showing the kids how to do all of the centers. And what do you think happened the rest of the week during centers? We got constant questions on what they were supposed to do. They couldn't remember. Or it wasn't blatantly obvious. Or they were absent on Monday. Or they were spinning circles during directions. Or, or, or... :)

That's the problem with inconsistency. And that's exactly why I was adamant about keeping Super Phonics consistent from week to week. Consistency is one of the things I hear over and over from teachers who use my Super Phonics digital curriculum.

Digital Phonics Means Online Flexibilty

Anyone heard of a little thing called CoVid? :) Phonics instruction was unaffected by teachers who were using a digital phonics curriculum. My teachers continued to teach Science of Reading aligned phonics over zoom calls and even assigned phonics lessons for kids to go back and do on their own in Google classroom.

Super Phonics comes as a PowerPoint download, but it can be uploaded into Google slides. Some of the automatic timing on the decoding slides is lost because Google Slides (at the time of this blog post) doesn't yet support those tools, but it is closely the same.

If you still aren't sure if digital phonics is the way to go, try it out! For FREE! Just click the image below to get an entire week of digital phonics for either kindergarten, first grade or second grade sent straight to your inbox!