Ringo - Building Consonant Sounds with ELL/ESL Learners
Tobey Bassoff

Goal
To build sight word fluency and sound awareness with the consonants

Time
20 minutes

Set-Up
Small Group

Reference
Words Their Way by Bear, Invernizzi, Tepleton, & Johnson (2000), Prentice-Hall
Beginning Consonants - p. 309

Materials
A bingo board for each student, unifix cubes or counters of some kind

1. Design a bingo board with beginning consonant sounds. (eg. b (bell), c (cat), d (dog), etc. Add pictures of these objects for added reinforcement of vocabulary building)
   You can use the picture cards on p.309 in Words Their Way (2000) to save time.
   
2. Make enough boards for a small group of 3-6. Have boards laminated for future use. Assemble 3 - 6 students. Distribute boards and unifix cubes or counters.
   
3. Say a word that is on the card. (For example: bell). Then, have the students cover the square with a unifix cube or counter. Do this until they get the hang of it. Then, explain that it will be a game to see who can get four in a row vertically, or horizontally. Whoever has it calls RINGO!
   
4. Make the game more difficult by saying a word that has a beginning consonant on the card, but the word itself is not on the card. (For example: brother) Students then have to hear the sound and register that the first sound they hear is "b," and cover the b is for bell square. 

5. Differentiate the game to include high frequency words, sight words for stories, and word families.