🧠 The First Step Toward Reading for Young ESL Learners!
This Short Aa Phonics Unit from SuperEnglishESL.com is the perfect introduction to reading for kindergarten students and true beginner ESL learners. Focused entirely on the short vowel sound /a/, this unit helps students recognize, pronounce, and read words with the short “a” sound through fun stories, rhymes, chants, and phonics-based activities.
With structured repetition, phonemic awareness games, and engaging decodable readers, students learn to sound out simple CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words like “cat,” “map,” and “van” while gaining confidence in reading, speaking, and rhyming in English.
This unit is ideal for online or classroom-based ESL instruction and provides a foundational step in any young learner’s phonics journey.
✅ 10+ short vowel word families: -at, -ap, -ag, -am, -an, -ad, -ab, -ax, etc.
✅ Short Aa rhymes, mini-books, reading passages, and games
✅ Fun phonics videos and chants (not shown in PDFs but included)
✅ Rhyming games, listen & circle tasks, pictionary, and sentence-building
✅ Ideal for Pre-A1 ESL learners in kindergarten or early Grade 1
Chap the boy meets Zap the dog! Together, they clap, rap, and nap in this action-filled, alliterative CVC reader that introduces -ap and -at words.
Target Sounds: /a/ in “cap,” “map,” “nap,” “yap”
A stubborn cat won’t give up its mat as visitors with bats, hats, and pads try to share the space. A funny tale with simple repetitive structure and rhyming words.
Target Sounds: -at, -ad, -ap
High-Frequency Words: this, is, go, said
Students follow Dan and his plan as he visits a van, a fan, and even a pan! Great for practicing “I see” sentence starters.
Target Sounds: -an, -am, -ap
Sight Words: I, see, he, has
Explore emotions with a lad and his dad in this artistic and emotional story.
Focus: Feelings vocabulary + “I can draw…” structure
Target Sounds: -ad, -am
Bonus: Perfect for SEL discussions and drawing activities
A humorous story of a cat, a bat, a hat, and a rat—all ending in a surprise nap! Students love predicting what comes next.
Target Words: mat, cat, hat, bat, rat
Skills: Rhyming, prepositions, sequencing
A collection of silly, rhyming poems with short /a/ words (e.g., “A ram by the dam had jam”). Great for reading aloud, rhyming games, and fluency practice.
Includes:
Match the rhyming word
Circle the rhyme
Fill-in-the-rhyme challenges
Read-and-act rhymes
Tic-Tac-Toe using vocabulary words
Boggle-style letter games
Chutes and Ladders CVC review
Listen & Circle + Listen & Write tasks
Pictionary for CVC words
Rhyming Challenges
Pre-A1 ESL students learning to read
Kindergarten and early elementary English learners
Teachers introducing CVC blending and short vowel sounds
Online ESL tutors or classroom instructors
ESL short vowel a phonics unit
Kindergarten CVC reading worksheets
ESL short Aa reading stories
Beginner phonics for ESL kids
Decodable readers for ESL learners
Phonics games and rhymes for short a
SuperEnglishESL short vowel phonics unit