Engagement with Digital Phonics

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Colleen Brown is a second year kindergarten teacher at Bridgeport Elementary. She continually looks to make learning fun and engaging for her kindergarten students. She intentionally tries hard to build a classroom community where students come to school looking forward to being with their friends, their teacher, and doing a little (or a lot) of learning along the way!

Like many K-2 teachers in the district, Colleen was excited to welcome tablets to her classroom. She immediately went into action to look for ways to incorporate technology with some of Wayne’s little learners. One thing that Colleen’s students look forward to is using their tablets for phonics. Colleen has found a way to build a solid phonics instruction using various apps and websites, like Nearpod, Jamboard, Boom Cards, and interactive Google Classroom assignments, to help students learn their letters and letter sounds.


Colleen creates lessons where she moves students away from traditional paper pencil tasks, to using tablets for drag and drop activities, tracing with fingers and styluses, and annotating on screen, all while she is teaching and monitoring students as they work. There are multiple opportunities for students to practice the skills they are learning in the classroom, while using a vehicle that is familiar for them. This results in Colleen’s students being actively engaged from the beginning to the end of her lessons!

Written by Angel Garrett, BPE iTEC Teacher