Wednesday 30 July 2014

Walk around and find a sound


Lay out the grapheme cards on the floor. Ask the children to step on the grapheme cards as they sing the following song. This is a little bit like musical chairs but they are actually stepping on a card rather than sitting on a chair.
‘Walk around and find a sound, find a sound, find a sound. Walk around and find a sound. What sound is it?’ (Sing to the tune of London’s burning).
When the song finishes then they stop on a grapheme card. Ask the children quickly one by one to shout out sound of the grapheme card they have landed on.
Extension

To extend this activity further then use words instead of graphemes and the child has to blend and read the word they land on. Another extension would be to use large picture cards which focus on the correct sounds and if they land on it they have to spell it.

Pick one and read it!

Write a sound at the top of the lolly stick and a word at the bottom. The child picks a sound, names the sound and then blends and reads the word. 

Bag of sounds

This is a pass the parcel type game where the bag is passed around the circle as you all sing ‘Bag of sounds, pass it round, pass it round, pass it round. Bag of sounds, pass it round. What sound is it?’ (Sang to the tune of London Bridge is falling down). Whoever has the bag when the song finishes has to take out a letter and read it.

Word thief

Ask the child to read the sentence. Then give him some scissors and ask him to cut the sentence into words. Mix them up and make the sentence again. Ask the child to close their eyes whilst you steal a word. Ask the child to open their eyes. Which word is missing? Can they tell you? They will need to read the sentence again and try and work out which word is missing. Children could do this activity in pairs.
Some examples of simple sentences:
A cat and a dog sat on a mat.
A man is in a bed.
A cat sat on a mat.
A pig sat on a mat.
Sit on a mat.
The sentences can reflect the sounds you are working on so can be worked on at any phase of letters and sounds. For example if you were working on the /ai/ sound you could have.
It can rain in Spain.

The man can paint.

Real or alien word?

You need three dice, two with consonants and one with vowels, a whiteboard and pen.
Divide the whiteboard into two and write Alien on one side and Real on the other side. The child throws the dice and blends the three sounds together. Is it a real word or an alien word? The child writes the word in the correct column.

Roll the letter

Write the sounds which are on the die onto the whiteboard and add 2 or 3 extra sounds which are not on the die. Ask the child to throw the die and match the letter on the die to the letter on the whiteboard. They can cross off each letter one at a time. How quickly can they roll all six letters? How many letters are left? What are the letters that are left?

Roll the word

You need to write graphemes on 3 dice on each face. Consonants on two dice and vowels on the third die. Write some word for your child on the whiteboard that can be made out of rolling the dice. Then give your child a whiteboard pen and the three dice. They must roll the dice and try and match a word.

If you are working in school with activity then write the words on a piece of paper and then you can photocopy for the whole class. Children can work in pairs with 3 dice between them and a sheet of paper with the words on. They can tick or cross out the words as they roll them on the dice.

How many times can you write it?

Most children love a bit of competition and this very simple activity gives competition and lots of practice at writing letters correctly. Set a timer for 1 minute. How many times can the child write the focus grapheme in one minute? The letters must be readable and formed correctly as you will be watching. The person who writes the letter the most times is the winner. This activity also gives children some good counting practice too.

Ask the children to write a word as many times as they can in one minute. This could be extended further by asking them to write a caption or sentence as many times as they can in one minute, making sure they put the capital letter at the beginning and a full stop at the end of their sentence.

Race to the board

This activity gets children up and moving around. You need to decide what your focus sounds are and lay the magnetic letters out on the floor at one side of the classroom. At the other side of the classroom you need magnetic boards. Ideally one magnetic board each but one between two would be fine. The adult shouts out a sound and the child must get the magnetic letter and move quickly and safely across the classroom and stick the letter on their board. This could be a great group activity or even class activity providing safety is taken into consideration. You could do this in the hall to give more room to run around.
 This could be extended by using words instead of just sounds. Read out a word and the child has to collect the correct letters, run across the classroom and spell the word.
You could also show the children a picture and the child has to get the beginning sound and run across the classroom to stick on their board.

Snowball toss

All you need are paper cups, pen and cotton wool balls. The child throws the cotton wool ball at the cup and then reads the grapheme.

Find it!

Use several paper cups with the words you want the child to blend and read. Hide a small toy or in my case I used a small fish eraser. The child has to choose a cup, read the word and then look to see if they can find the toy. Repeat lots of times with different words.

Find the sounds

A very simple activity where you write graphemes on a kitchen roll tube and also on some stickers. The child has to stick the sticker onto the same sound on the the kitchen roll tube.

Cup blending

All you need are three cups and a black marker pen. The cups must fit into each other with a little bit of a lip at the top so you can see them when they are slotted together. The child twists the cups and blends the words. Is it a real word or an alien (non word)?

Paper plate sounds

A very simple concept using a paper plate. Focus on a few sounds or all the sounds in a particular phase. All you need to do is write the sounds all around the edge of the plate, cut at each side and the child bends over the sound they hear. You could read words and they have to find the beginning sound or just say the sound and they have to find it and bend it over.
You could also ask them to spell a word for you by bending over the appropriate graphemes in the correct order.