How to Design your own Online Phonics Lessons?

In my previous blog post, I explained how to create an actions plan, and conceptualize your online phonics lesson. This post will be all about what the lesson looks i.e. all the visual aspects of your slides. Design is one of my favorite things and I love talking about it. I have always loved art and creating beautiful things, but at first, I found this very challenging and I needed help to get started. The simple fact is even though you have wonderful lesson content if it is not visually appealing and interactive your students will find it boring. The reason why there is a saying 'Death by PowerPoint' is because most people don't know how to use all the different functions PowerPoint has to offer. In this blog, I hope that I can inspire you to think differently about PowerPoint and give you practical tips to create stunning lessons. I will look at how to use fonts, images, themes, and colors to make your online phonics lesson more engaging and interesting to look at.

How to use Fonts in your Online Phonics Lesson?

Based on what I have read, people recommended that you chose two fonts and use them throughout your lesson. It can get distracting when every slide has a different font. It is best to allocate a font and font size to your headings and other text to give your lesson a more cohesive look. When you are designing a phonics lesson it is important to keep in mind that the students are learning how to read and write and they only know one font type. It is usually print or cursive and some of the letters especially lower case 'y, t, and a' and capital 'I, J, and Y' have different forms in different fonts. I recommend using Comic Sans MS, it is not perfect but it is the best one I could find for print writing. If you have a bigger selection of fonts I would suggest typing out the whole alphabet (upper- and lowercase) selecting your textbox and going through your fonts list and looking at especially the above-mentioned letters to see if there is a different font you could use.

There are fonts that are designed for foundation phase lessons and especially phonics that you can download for free or at a cost, HERE is a FREE font you can download. When creating resources for a store, it is important that you read the terms of use. Another thing to remember is that your buyer might not have this font on their computer so you will have to inform your buyers that they will also have to download this font otherwise your lesson will not look the way you intended once downloaded on a different computer. A way to avoid this is to save your textboxes or entire slide as images, this will limit your animation options. Personally, I use the fonts that PowerPoint has available and I created my own trace font. You can create your own letters in PowerPoint, it can be a hassle to save the images and resize them.

How to use Images in your Online Phonics Lesson?

Images are very important in phonics lessons as your students might not be able to read they will use images to help them understand the context of the lesson or the meaning of the words. In this way, images can help significantly in the retention of new words and sounds when used properly. It is however worth remembering that pictures should be used actively throughout the lesson. If you are interested in reading more about how images can be used to teach sight words, click HERE. Most people will turn to Google when looking for images to use for their lessons. This is not a problem if you are not planning on selling your lessons. If you want to sell them your images must be for commercial use. Aside from the copyright issue that I have encountered when using clipart from Google, the images have different artist therefor they look different in style. This ends up making my lessons look like a mismatched compilation of images. Sometimes the images are pixilated as they were saved as low-quality images. They can also have backgrounds that I can only sometimes remove which is not ideal. In order to avoid these kinds of problems, I create my own clipart images as it gives me the most options and versatility. The downside is that it is time-consuming but if you are interested in learning how I do this you can click HERE to watch a free tutorial. The benefits of creating your own clipart images are that you can use them freely and change them to create coloring sheets and loads of other activities and resources. You also have the freedom to choose the style of the images and make all your images look the same and you can change the colors to suit your needs. If your time is limited and you don't mind buying clipart images, click HERE. I would look for images with transparent backgrounds as they are easier to use for different activities and your work will look more professional.

How to use Themes in your Online Phonics Lesson?

The design theme of your lesson refers to the design element which binds the lesson together, for instance, the layout and images you use for your PowerPoint slides. Ideally, you would choose the theme to match the content of your lesson i.e. if you are making a lesson about sea animals then you would make your slides look like a sea landscape and add pictures of fish and different plants and animals. It is difficult to find a theme that relates to all the words in a phonics lesson because these words are grouped together because they share a common sound not meaning. For phonics, I would suggest using a theme that is interchangeable for both boys and girls such as the beach or school. It could be something that your students are familiar with or it could be something that they can discover as they learn. As this will only be used to decorate the slides, I would advise against making it too busy as this could distract from the content. You could simplify the slides by only using borders (link HERE) and different textboxes (link HERE). I only use the borders that are available on PowerPoint and I add my own design elements that fit in with the theme that I chose for my unit of lessons. My motto is, less is more, but I also want to make my lessons look pretty so find your own balance between aesthetics and functionality.

How to use Color in your Online Phonics Lesson?

As we all know different colors can have an effect on our mood. Colors have different meanings as well. When it comes to designing your online lesson color is extremely important. Font colors can focus attention and help students to make connections. The background color of each slide can create a feel and atmosphere i.e. blues are calming and yellows will make you feel happy. The effects of color on learning is a fascinating field worth looking into before you start designing your lessons, for more information click HERE. For the purpose of this blog post, I will only highlight some interesting information that you can consider. As mentioned before color has the ability to focus attention, when you drive down the street and you see a red stop sign, you will focus on it. It is no coincidence that they made it red as it catches your eye and it evokes an emotional response. Think about how you can use color in the same way to make your lesson more effective. If there are words that you want to focus your student's attention on, make them red or warm bright colors. Here it is worth mentioning that you should choose your font colors wisely. Think about which words you want to focus your student's attention on, if all the words are bright warm colors then it is less effective. Backgrounds can either be light or dark but should not draw too much attention and should stay more or less consistent throughout the lesson. When you use a darker background you can make your fonts lighter or vice versa with a light background. Regardless of what colors you choose, what your write should be easy to read. When you make your font yellow and the background white it will be difficult to read. You could use complementary colors for your fonts and backgrounds i.e. yellow and purple, blue and orange, red and green. Complementary colors will pop out when placed next to each other. Another thing you could do is add shadows to your fonts, this will make them easier to read. When you want to use an image as the background, you could change the background of your textbox to make it more or less transparent so your text is easy to read. Try not to go overboard with color, choose your color palette and stick to it. I believe that when you are consistent in your design then your students will start to feel relaxed as they can anticipate what will happen next and make an association between color and instruction or words and this in turn can help them to remember and recall information.

I hope this helps you to create beautiful Online Phonics Lessons. All my ideas and advice are based on my experience and if you can teach me more, I would love to learn from you, so please comment below or send me a message and tell me your thoughts.