Wet fingers and printed pages

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Goodenough
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Joined: Tue Sep 16, 2008 5:28 pm

Wet fingers and printed pages

Post by Goodenough »

I wonder if anyone else has this problem. I am using level 1 pages with reception aged children at the moment. They know their sounds pretty well and I am using the pages for revision, practice in blending and segmenting and letter formation. As I have a mixed age class I only have a few reception children so I have been printing out the pages for them thus giving them the benefit of the coloured letters. I am having to change to photocopying however as a couple of children constantly have wet fingers from putting their hands in their mouths and so are always smearing the ink.
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debbie
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Post by debbie »

Good to see your name pop up on the forum again!

Your experience made me chuckle! I never quite thought about the 'wet fingers' issue!

Well, many teachers will already be photocopying resources for large numbers and I find such resources still look smart and appealing to the children/students. Sometimes I put the 'darken' facility on if the unit's colour is a bit pale like unit 6.

Other resources lend themselves to being made up into games and activities which can be laminated - that'll sort out the wet fingers problem!
Even the resources which first and foremost are designed as paper resources could still be suitable laminated for the youngest children. They could use those 'dry-write' pens for permanent resources where a bit of letter formation is required - just for a change.

The other suggestion is to use the 'smudge factor' to train the children not to suck their fingers. You can say, "Look what you have done to your lovely work - smudged it because you keep sucking your fingers. Let's try to remind one another not to suck our fingers!"

They'll enjoy catching one another out and bossing them around to stop doing this!

So, you might end up being glad of a bit of smudging! :wink:
Debbie Hepplewhite
Goodenough
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Post by Goodenough »

Sorry Debbie, Only now getting around to posting a reply. It's not a major problem of course and the photocopied sheets are fine. Cheaper than printing too! I'm not enthusiastic about laminating the basic sheets to be honest, too many things to laminate as it is. Not to worry!
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debbie
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Post by debbie »

I agree that teachers can tend to be a bit 'laminate-happy' nowadays.

For my own purposes (re teacher-training and advising), I am going to go through all the programme's resources to see 'which' are the key ones which are useful for laminating.

The programme is so flexible that sometimes a strand is great either in paper form, or laminated - or in some cases 'both'.

For example, my Reception teacher daughter uses paper word-strip word lists from the Early Years Starter Package.

When she does her Basic Phonics Lessons, the children look at graphemes already taught along the top of her whiteboard (laminated Grapheme Tiles with sticky-backed magnetic tape) and 'say the sounds' and then when she says the sounds, they 'point to the graphemes'.

Then, my daughter introduces the new letter/s-sound correspondence and adds that Grapheme Tile onto the board. They look at the Picture Posters from the full PI programme and she finger tracks under the printed words whilst saying the words and they look at the pictures, say the whole word and then segment the whole word into its individiual sounds from beginning to end of the word.

They then do some very simple blending of words made up with the magnetic Grapheme Tiles. They get a paper Grapheme Tile of the new sound (or new grapheme) and glue it into their 'sounds books' which are actually little exercise books that they can glue in, write in and draw pictures of key words with the focus sound.

They draw a focus picture under or near the Grapheme Tile. They practise writing the new letter shape/s.

Then, once children have been introduced to blending and are on their way to being able to blend, they also start to glue in the word-strip word lists to rehearse saying the sounds from left to right in the words and then 'hearing' the focus word. They practise by themselves and take it in turns to read to the adult and they can 'tick' the words they blended.

This 'sounds book' then goes to and fro' home in a book bag. This informs the parents what is being taught and the children can have a little practice at home as well.

The information for parents is provided at the top of the Early Years Starter Package webpage in the form of some instructions and a little chart to be stuck into the 'sounds book'.

This exercise book is the equivalent of the full PI programme's Sounds Book Activity Sheet. It is important, however, that teachers and parents who use the exercise book also rehearse oral segmenting and spelling routines as well. This can be done in the 'sounds book' and children can attempt to write the words direct in the book, and/or use Grapheme Tiles to spell the word.

Oops - I've gone a bit off topic I'm afraid. But we were talking about 'wet fingers' - in other words our 'littlies' doing the phonics activities!

By the way, the Basic Phonics Lesson I have referred to above is described in the guidance book available at the top of the webpage of the Early Years Starter Package.

I think schools which have bought the full PI programme in the past, but not the EYSP, will be very pleased to see the package included in the full PI programme now.

Please do take a look at the Early Years Starter Package because I think schools will find the materials in there useful for their youngest children and for children who need to take smaller steps or revise previous teaching. :D
Debbie Hepplewhite
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debbie
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Post by debbie »

I digressed in the message above:

I was going to say that the various word lists can be useful in paper-based form but also as laminated lists for blending, segmenting/spelling and handwriting activities.

I always recommend that when children begin to take reading books home, slipped inside could be their Bookmark (at the appropriate level) and also a laminated 'word list' of one type or another!

If parents are then happy to extend the child's work at home from reading the reading book, it might also include 'saying the sounds' from the Bookmark and 'blending' the words from the word list - and the word list can also be used for the parent to read the words aloud for the child to orally segment. This can be extended sometimes to spelling the words with Grapheme Tiles or writing the words.

Or - the child can look at the list and practise some handwriting. This can involve (as appropriate) translating the printed writing into joined writing if and when the school has introduced joined handwriting.
Debbie Hepplewhite
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