About This Activity

Overview

The Phonics Matching Tiles gives ESL teachers a powerful tool for teaching phonics to younger learners. Unlike worksheet driven approaches, this system is 100% tile based.

Teachers simply need to print the provided files onto printer-friendly cardstock, cut out the tile squares, and glue them to one or more extra layers to create thick, easy-to-handle tiles.

The Word Tiles in this printable learning system are designed for CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words. This means that students can practice matching:

  • a (blue) beginning constant Sound Tile to the left side of Word Tiles.

  • a (violet) ending consonant Sound Tile to the right side of Word Tiles.

  • an (orange) vowel Sound Tile to the bottom of Word Tiles.

  • a (green) vowel-consonant combination Sound Tile to the bottom of Word Tiles.

 

Activity Presentation Phase Instructions

 

Phonics Tile - Beginning M Sound

Sound Tile for the 
beginning 'm' sound

 

Phonics Tile - Ending G Sound

Sound Tile for the 
short 'a' sound

 

Phonics Tile - Ending P Sound

Sound Tile for the 
ending 'p' sound

 

Word Tile for 'dog'

Phonics Word
Tile for 'map'

 

 

Methodological Background

Many younger learners struggle with learning phonics. Practice activities that require holding a pencil can be very tiring for 4-6 year old children. Additionally, students usually find learning phonics rather boring.

A tile-based system takes away the need for pencils and turns phonics learning into a highly repeatable game that students will find stimulating and fun.

This has two key benefits:

  • Students who are still struggling with learning how to hold a pencil can participate fully. No pencils (or other writing utensils) are needed to enjoy using the Phonics Matching Tiles!

  • The tiles can be used for races and other games. For example, students can have a race to see who is the fastest at matching the right beginning consonants to 10 Word Tiles. Students can participate as individual competitors or their teacher can divide them into teams.

 Activity Presentation Phase Instructions

 

 

Download Tiles

 

 

Useful For MANY Phonics Lessons

This tile-based learning system can be used to teach almost every phonics learning goal. From the difference between consonants and vowels, to understanding blends, digraphs, and r-colored vowels, these tiles can be used for just about everything teachers need to teach about phonics. 

The phonics learning goals that this learning system is designed to teach are listed below.

 

Note: The main limitation of this tile system is that it is not suitable for teaching about magic-e. However, we have other great resources that are perfect for this purpose and build naturally upon the content taught by Phonics Tile Matching.

 

 

Consonant Phonics Tiles

Consonant Sounds

 

Short Vowel Phonics Tiles

Short Vowel Sounds

 

Long Vowel Phonics Tiles

Long Vowel Sounds

 

Multiple Spellings Phonics Tiles

Multiple Spellings of Sounds

 

'qu' Phonics Tiles

Special 'q' + 'u' Relationship

 

Consonant Digraph Phonics Tiles

Consonant Digraph Sounds

 

Consonant Blend Phonics Tiles

Consonant Blend Sounds

 

R-Colored Vowel Phonics Tiles

R-Colored Vowel Sounds

 

Consonant Blend Phonics Tiles

Other Phonics Sounds

 

 

Word Tile Printables

To use this system, teachers will need at least a small collection of Word Tiles. These tiles feature the image of a CVC phonics word in the middle and have color/shape connection points on the sides for each phonics sound that forms the tile's word.

Students can practice phonics encoding by placing Sound Tiles around each Word Tile.

 

You can make use of any of our pre-made Word Tiles to print a wide variety of tile for common one-syllable phonics teaching words. 

All of the provide Word Tile printable files are available in .pptx format and are therefore fully editable. You can easily change words at your discretion so that you only need to print the Word Tiles that you want to use.

You can also use a template file to build a printable set of Word Tiles from scratch.

Included in our download options is a .zip folder containing over 200 images for common phonics teaching words. These can easily be dropped into any of our printable Word Tile files, but you can also use your own images.

 

Editable Pre-Made Printables

Word Tiles are available for the following topic-specific word-lists.

 

Vocabulary Words Used in Activity
Animals ant, bat, bear, bee, bird, bug, bull, cat, clam, cow, crab, deer, dog, duck, fish, fly, fox, frog, goat, hen, lamb, owl, ox, pig, quail, rat, seal, shark, sheep, shrimp, skunk, sloth, snail, squid, toad, worm
Body-Parts arm, back, beard, brain, chin, ear, foot, hand, hair, heart, knee, lip, lung, mouth, neck, rib, tail, thigh, thumb, toe, tooth, waist, wing, wrist
Clothing + Accessories badge, belt, boot, bow, cap, cast, chain, coat, dress, gown, hat, key, mask, pen, ring, scarf, shirt, shoe, skirt, sock, suit, tie, vest, wig
Colors + Shapes black, blue, brown, gray, green, heart, pink, red, square, star, tan, teal
Directions + Numbers + Shapes down, eight, four, heart, left, right, six, square, star, ten, three, up
Food + Beverages bean, beef, bun, can, cup, corn, drink, fish, food, fruit, fry, ham, jam, juice, meat, milk, nut, pea, peach, pear, pie, plum, tea, yam
People boy, clown, cook, dad, girl, judge, king, maid, man, mom, queen, vet
Substances coal, flour, ink, mud, oil, rock, salt, sand, soil, steel, wax, wood, 
Things ax, bat, bed, book, bowl, box, bridge, can, chess, cup, coin, drum, fan, fridge, grass, leaf, lock, log, map, mat, mop, nest, net, oar, pan, pen, pot, quiz, root, rug, sax, sun, tree, tool, toy, yarn
Vehicles boat, bus, car, jeep, jet, ship, sled, sub, train, truck, tug, van
Verbs cut, dig, drink, eat, fix, mix, push, put, run, sit, stand, zip