Phonics bingo

The teaching of phonics (sound-spelling correspondences or SSCs), is definitely in vogue in England, not just for first language learners at primary school, but in modern language classrooms. For many years, teachers have taught the link between spelling and phonology, usually on an ad hoc basis. But since around 2016, when the TSC Review of pedagogy was published, the explicit teaching of phonics has been strongly recommended by the DfE via NCELP and, more recently, the Ofsted Research Review which itself quoted from the TSC Review (Bauckham, 2016). The NCELP resources not only embodied explicit phonics teaching, but a systematic approach to the same, i.e. planning out a sequence of when to introduce each SSC and design lessons partly based on that sequence.

The extent to which skill with phonics is acquired implicitly or through explicit teaching can be debated. Robert Woore (2022) looked at this and concluded that there is some, but not abundant, evidence that explicitly teaching sound-spelling correspondences can help students become better at spelling and pronouncing.

Whatever the evidence, the inspection body Ofsted expects to see evidence in classrooms and schemes of learning that explicit phonics teaching is going on. (The days are gone when Ofsted had no preference for teaching styles in classrooms, I think.)

My own belief is that phonics skill is primarily developed implicitly through classroom activities which involve seeing text while hearing it read aloud, reading aloud and the plethora of other classroom activities which involve listening, reading, speaking and writing. Explicit attention to the awkward areas (where the SSCs and phonology are most unlike the L1 system) can help a bit. Showing individual words with letters highlighted and choral repetition may induce boredom on its own.

In Breaking the Sound Barrier: Teaching Language Learners How to Listen (Conti and Smith, 2019) we provided many examples of activities and games which help develop phonics skill through use. One little game which builds sensitivity to sound and helps students match sounds to spelling is phonics bingo. Below is a resource I wrote for frenchteacher.ner which shows how the game may be played. The original Word doc is better formatted than below.

References

Bauckham. I. (2016). Available at: https://pure-research.york.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/54043904/MFL_Pedagogy_Review_Report_TSC_PUBLISHED_VERSION_Nov_2016_1_.pdf

Woore, R. (2022). What can second language acquisition research tell us about the phonics ‘pillar’? Available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09571736.2022.2045683

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1.    Hand out a bingo card to each student. There are eight provided. It doesn’t matter if two or three students get the same one. The key sound/spelling correspondences are IN BOLD on each card.

2.     Instead of reading out numbers, read out sounds (phonemes). Do not read out the same one more than once. So each game only last a couple of minutes.

3.     Students can swap cards for the next game, or you can hand out more cards.

 

Below are the sounds to be spoken. They are all vowel phonemes which can be spelled in different ways in French. I have not used accurate (IPA) phonetic alphabet symbols. Remember: just utter the sound, not the word.

/u/        As in ‘une’

/ou/      As in ‘vous’

/i/         As in ‘samedi’

/e/        As in ‘été’

/e:/       As in ‘mère’

/õ/        As in ‘ballon’

/in/       As in ‘main’

/un/      As in ‘brun’

/an/      As in ‘grand’

/eu/      As in ‘bleu’

/oi/       As in ‘moi’

/o/        As in ‘gros’

/ou/      As in ‘nous’

/a/        As in ‘animal’

 

Note that there are 14 sounds, but each card only contains 12. Warn the class that they may hear a sound which is not on their card at all.

Phonics bingo cards (8 different cards) – to be cut out and distributed, one to each pupil

chien	lundi	grand	petit
été	mère	gros	marron
une	bleu	nous	voiture

 

aime	brun	bateau	vous
chat	papa	brune	ballon
matin	aller	anglais	petits pois

 

vert	bien	lundi	cheveux
brune	toi	préfère	français
avons	Paris	main	coucou

 

enfant	moi	mon	vin
préfère	lundi	animal	musique
regarder	route	blond	souris

 

fin	lundi	blanc	petit
éléphant	aime	gros	poisson
lune	bleu	mouton	moi

 

aime	brun	eau	mouton
voiture	Irlande	brune	ballon
matin	écouter	grande	moi

 

frère	bien	lundi	sœur
brune	bois	préfère	cent
citron	pipi	main	loup

 

enfant	moi	mon	vin
préfère	lundi	fleur	musique
manger	route	allons	souris