Football Phonics Game

by Jessica Elliott-Lawrence on 25 Jun 2014

Score some phonics goals and cheer on your team in the World Cup, while reinforcing the different spelling representations of each vowel phoneme.

Print Football Phonics Template
Photocopy one goal per spelling representation e.g. ‘e’, ‘ee’, ‘ea’, ‘y’, ‘e_e’ = 5
Photocopy one sheet of soccer ball cards per child
Cut out ball cards individually
Write one target spelling representation on each goal e.g. ‘ea’
Write corresponding words on each ball card e.g. ‘beach’ (you can use the word lists from the Toolkit)
Have the children sit in small groups with various goals in the centre of each group
Additionally, you will need around 50 tokens per group

N.B. If you intend to re-use the goals and cards, laminate them after printing, and use a whiteboard marker to write on them.

Deal each child 15 soccer ball cards (one whole set) with the words facing down.
The player to the dealer’s left starts. Have the child flip over his or her first card revealing a word.
Have the child read the word aloud.
Ask the child to place the card on the correct goal.
If the child chooses the correct goal, he or she will receive one token.
If the child chooses the incorrect goal, have him or her read the word again and try again.
The child to the left of the player then takes a turn, following the same steps.
Once all of the cards are on goals, the player who has the most tokens wins!

To make it harder, get the children to write their own words using the target spelling representations. See who can score the most goals!