Ideas of how to teach alternate graphemes to y5

[GizmoIsSoFluffy]

1:1 TA here.
Have been asked to teach a small.group.of.children alternate graphemes.
Year 5. Green level.

All the teacher has told me is to show them.flash cards. I can't do that for 25 mins, they would be bored stiff.

I have made a matching cards came,.but there must be more I can do.to.shake it.up a bit.

Any ideas of how to make it more interesting for them? Although I know all the sounds I've never taught phonics before.

Thanks

We have fly swatters and they can hit the ones they need too, seems naughty to them and they like it!

Which graphemes do they need to work on? For reading or for writing?

KS2 who can't choose the right grapheme normally need to learn which representation is the best fit for the what they're trying to write. Looking at sound families can be one strategy, learning about when to use ai, ay, a_e, a etc. Looking at using each sound in a word and choosing which one looks correct (e.g. plait, playt, plate, plat)

What does your phonics lead suggest you use? Does your phonics scheme have a KS2 intervention?

I'm assuming this is an intervention? I would speak to the phonics lead in your school. Ask for some training on whatever scheme the school use, or at the very least ask to observe how Year 1 or 2 teach it.

If the session is 25 minutes, I'd say it should mirror a phonics lesson. Flashcards are fine for a starter, to recap once you've spent some time on them, but you're right that they'll be bored senseless doing that for more than 5 minutes (and they won't actually learn to apply them). It sounds to me that your teacher is just as inexperienced as you at delivering phonics and is fobbing you off just to tick a box that the children in their class who need it are receiving phonics interventions. If you want it done properly, definitely seek advice from those who teach it daily.

Initially, I'd introduce the different graphemes for whatever sound you're focusing on that day, play some sorting/matching games, then apply by reading and writing sentences containing them. For year 5, they should be able to cope with activities such as reading through a paragraph and seeking/highlighting the different spellings for each sound. You could get them to write a dictated sentence which features words they've been learning, where they have to select the correct grapheme etc.

Definitely speak to the phonics lead though as it depends what scheme the school use. They're all slightly different. In 25 minutes though there should be time for recapping, teaching a new phoneme/grapheme (or re-teaching in your case), then applying through reading and writing.

Thank you. I'm working with a wide range of abilities in the group; but I take all the ideas you have given. Thank you