simple paired activity using wordlists
Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2008 9:58 pm
I have suggested this activity before and the children did enjoy it, however I now have thought of a new way of using it which is proving more popular with the pupils- which is always a good thing!
I laminated A4 sheets for the children to to use as mini whiteboards and ordered a supply of whiteboard markers.
Make sure to use shiny laminated sheets as whiteboard marker cannot be erased from the matte ones (and I didn't discover this until I had 22 laminated )
It is easier to erase the marker if the child is reminded not to lean too heavily when writing.
The children work in pairs.
Each has a different wordlist- obviously using GPCs already taught.
Child A reads out a word which Child B has to segment, count the sounds, write the daashes and then write the correct grapheme on each sound line.
Child A then checks and corrects the spelling- they love ticking.
They then switch roles.
I was working with individual readers as the others were working at this avtivity and I found it much easier to keep an eye on what was being written due to the materials used compared to when they just used lined templates and pencils.
They were eager to continue this exercise for longer than when using paper and pencil.
Admittedly, lists written on paper can be filed as a record of progress, but you could do it using paper occasionally for this purpose.
There is a lot of peer teaching involved- I heard children remindng each other about correct letter formation, to check alternative spellings on the alphabetic code chart etc. as they worked.
I intend to extend this to a sentence dictation activity, depending on ability and as time goes on.
We also used the materials in a circle time discussion about elephants today.
We were discussing 'tusks' and then 'trunk' and I got them to count the sounds, write the dashes and then map the graphemes onto the dashes.
I was very interested to see thet one 4 year old wrote t u s x .
This led to an advanced discussion involving /x/ actually irepresenting a combination of 2 phonemes, plurals and root words, which words ending in /k/ are spelt with a 'k'and which with 'ck'and why!!!!
While much of this may have gone over some of the childrens heads, many of amazing these young people seemed to get the gist of it!!
I laminated A4 sheets for the children to to use as mini whiteboards and ordered a supply of whiteboard markers.
Make sure to use shiny laminated sheets as whiteboard marker cannot be erased from the matte ones (and I didn't discover this until I had 22 laminated )
It is easier to erase the marker if the child is reminded not to lean too heavily when writing.
The children work in pairs.
Each has a different wordlist- obviously using GPCs already taught.
Child A reads out a word which Child B has to segment, count the sounds, write the daashes and then write the correct grapheme on each sound line.
Child A then checks and corrects the spelling- they love ticking.
They then switch roles.
I was working with individual readers as the others were working at this avtivity and I found it much easier to keep an eye on what was being written due to the materials used compared to when they just used lined templates and pencils.
They were eager to continue this exercise for longer than when using paper and pencil.
Admittedly, lists written on paper can be filed as a record of progress, but you could do it using paper occasionally for this purpose.
There is a lot of peer teaching involved- I heard children remindng each other about correct letter formation, to check alternative spellings on the alphabetic code chart etc. as they worked.
I intend to extend this to a sentence dictation activity, depending on ability and as time goes on.
We also used the materials in a circle time discussion about elephants today.
We were discussing 'tusks' and then 'trunk' and I got them to count the sounds, write the dashes and then map the graphemes onto the dashes.
I was very interested to see thet one 4 year old wrote t u s x .
This led to an advanced discussion involving /x/ actually irepresenting a combination of 2 phonemes, plurals and root words, which words ending in /k/ are spelt with a 'k'and which with 'ck'and why!!!!
While much of this may have gone over some of the childrens heads, many of amazing these young people seemed to get the gist of it!!