Classroom Activities: Short Vowels
These classroom activities are designed to complement the Short Vowels topic on BrainPOP Jr.
Vowel Sound Labels
Review a short vowel sound with your students. Then spend a day or week exploring words with that sound. Point to different objects in the classroom that use the short vowel sound and have students name the object out loud. Write the word on the board and read it together. Then have a student volunteer label the object to create a text-rich environment.
Sound Poem
On chart paper, write a poem that incorporates the same short vowel several times. Read the poem to the class and ask them to listen carefully. Then read it again and ask children to clap or snap whenever they hear the short vowel sound. Finally, call on students to identify the words where they hear the short vowel and to highlight these words in the poem. You may want to collect a separate list of these short vowel words, and ask students to illustrate them afterward.
Short Vowel Hunt
Tell students they are going to be detectives and go on a hunt for one of the vowel sounds. Students can work in pairs or individually to look through books, at classroom charts, and on labels around the room to find words that have the specified short vowel sound and write them on a paper. Often children will look for any word with the vowel in it, so remind them to read the word out loud to make sure it makes the short vowel sound. When they have collected several words, gather the class together and ask volunteers to share the words they found. As they offer words you may want to sort the words into categories, like: words that start with short a, words that have a short a between two consonants, and words that have short a at the end.