English

Term 1 Week 8

Familiar reading

Using familiar texts;

  • Read to a friend

  • Read to a book buddy

  • Film yourself on an ipad (Change focus eg fluency and phrasing or reading to punctuation)

  • Checklist bookmark (Who, What, Where, When and Why)

  • Pretend you are a teacher and read to a group.

Spelling focus

Students enter this code send278 at www.soundwaveskids.com.au

Strategy

Competence in phonemic awareness is clearly related to success in spelling skills and involves understanding and demonstrating skills in:

  • rhyming.

  • hearing individual sounds in spoken language - phoneme awareness.

  • segmenting.

  • blending.

  • manipulating individual sounds in spoken language.

Activities to support the strategy

Activity 1: beginning-middle-end

Beginning-Middle-End is useful as an extremely brief, whole-class activity.

  • The teacher places the letters of a three- or four-letter word face down so that the students cannot see them and tells the students the word (e.g., dog).

  • The teacher and students sing the following brief song to the tune of “Are You Sleeping, Brother John?”: “Beginning, middle, end; beginning, middle, end/Where is the sound? Where is the sound?/Where’s the d in dog? Where’s the d in dog?/Let’s find out. Let’s find out.”

  • After singing, one student comes forward, picks the position (beginning, middle, or end) that he or she believes the sound is in, and turns around the letter card. If the child reveals the letter d the teacher asks the class, “Does this letter make the d sound?” and confirms, “Yes, it does, doesn’t it? We hear the d sound at the beginning of dog.”

  • Repeat this process for the other two phonemes. It is more engaging if the teacher does not ask for the phonemes in sequence. Middle sounds are more difficult to discern so they should be asked later.

  • Use Beginning – Middle–End one or two times each day during kindergarten and early first grade, selecting words that reinforce the letters that students are studying.

  • Use high frequency words on the blank chart to show a visual letter-phoneme map. Laminate on A3 to use several times a day.

  • Use a Y shaped arrow when two letters make one phoneme and no arrows connecting phonemes that make no sound (e.g. silent ‘e’).

Activity 2: word mapping

Use high frequency words on the blank chart to show a visual letter-phoneme map. Laminate on A3 to use several times a day.

Use a Y shaped arrow when two letters make one phoneme and no arrows connecting phonemes that make no sound (e.g. silent ‘e’).

Activity 3: spelling roll–a–word (ES1 – S2)

Start with the first word in your spelling list. Roll a die and complete the activity for the number you roll. Continue with the rest of your list.

Activity 4: word family garden (ES1 – S2)

Have students help to identify words with the same ending and then display the word families in an attractive manner. Make it possible to add to the display. For example, add new petals to the flowers in the following word family garden.

Apps and interactive programs

Grammar focus Verbs

Verbs create the relationship between the subject and the object of the verb.

The verb is the element that expresses what is happening in a sentence and locates it in time (tense). In broad terms the tense will be past, present or future, for example 'Sarah laughed', 'Sarah laughs', 'Sarah will laugh'. Participles (verbs ending in –ing) do not locate a verb in time and need a finite component to indicate when the event happens. For example, the participle running needs the finite auxiliaries was running (past), is running (present), will be running (future) to indicate when the running occurred. Verbs are central to a clause.

Verbs occur both as single words and as verb groups. Verb groups can contain two or more verbs and are sometimes called complex/compound verbs. They may include non–finite verbs (for example, 'to jump'in 'is going to jump').

Verbs are central to a clause.

Verbs must agree with their subject in number. For example:

  • he jumps.

  • they jump.

Activities to support the strategy

Activity 1: tense sentences

Two teams are made. Three chairs are placed in a row with cards on each as perhaps below representing past, present and future.

Students, one at a time from each team, pick a card with a verb on it. Cards can be made using regular or irregular verbs

Either spin the spinner on the IWB or have a second set of the cards above shuffled for the student to also choose one. Student sits in the correct chair and must say a sentence in the correct tense. Both regular and irregular verbs can be used using assessment data to inform difficulty. Students keep playing until there is a 2 point (teacher choice) difference. Winning team become “tense champions” for the day.

Activity 2: bean bag toss

Students form a circle.

A bean bag is tossed to different students who must change the tense of the verb and put it in a sentence. Whenever a student makes a mistake, he or she has to leave the circle. The last student left standing gets a reward sticker or other prize.

Variation 1: two teams stand across from each other and throw the bean bag/s. Teacher calls out the sentence and the tense to change to. Team with the most correct and interesting answer wins.

Variation 2: the teacher has a number of singular and plural nouns on the board. Two teams take it in turn to throw the bean bag to the opposition who must use whatever the thrower indicates – either singular or plural noun in a sentence with the matching verb type.

Activity 3: subject-verb agreement rap

Students work with the teacher and the following information to create their own rap or mnemonic for the following.

  • Most nouns add “s” to show they are plural.

  • Verbs lose “s” to agree with plurals.


Some activities

  • Grammar sort e.g. noun, adjective, verb

  • Grammar hunt eg noun hunt in familiar reads or books of interest.

  • Highlight grammar focus in recent writing


Writing focus: Can I join or add to this sentence?

Strategy

Explicit teaching

There are different types of sentences: simple, compound and complex:

  • Simple sentences are structured by a single main clause.
    Example: I went to the movies.

  • Compound sentences are structured by two or more (independent) clauses that are linked together using a conjunction. Each clause conveys its own equal message.
    Example: I went to the movies and my friend ate an ice cream.

  • Complex sentences are structured by a main clause and one or more other (dependent) clauses. The main clause holds the main message and the other clauses elaborate on it.
    Example: I went to the movies while it was raining.

Students in Stage 1 need to write accurate simple and compound sentences and learn to recognise and compose some complex sentences. Teach students to join simple sentences with conjunctions, for example ‘and’, ‘but’ or ‘nor’ or ‘yet’, to construct compound sentences.

Introduce students to complex sentence structure. Teach students to recognise the main clause in complex sentences. Students can use conjunctions to elaborate on the main clause, for example ‘when’, ‘while’ or ‘before’, to construct complex sentences.

General strategies

Engage students with frequent experiences of hearing, reading and viewing texts with a variety of sentence structures. Prompt students to consider what sentence structures they can recognise and how they have been used to enhance the text.

Teach students how to join sentences using different conjunctions for different purposes (for example and, but, because). Encourage students to re-read their work (individually or in pairs) and check for simple or repetitive sentence structure that they can improve using compound and complex sentence structure.

Provide oral and written sentence patterns and scaffolds for compound and complex sentences that students can vary by inserting their own preferences, e.g. I like books about animals, but I don’t like ones about magic.

Activities to support the strategy

Activity 1: sentences can grow!

This activity can implemented whole class, in small groups, partners or 1:1. It can be adapted to suit subject matter in any learning area. It will support students to become familiar with common conjunctions and recognise when they can use compound sentence structure in writing.

  • Explain that conjunctions link ideas in sentences using a text with compound sentences.

  • Group students and provide an array of paired simple sentences e.g. (Julie bought 3 pencils. She lost 2 of them.) (Paul has a football. He threw it across the yard.)

  • Provide each group with long strips of paper to record their compound sentences. Example: "Julie bought 3 pencils but she lost 2 of them."

  • Ask students to turn the simple sentence pairs into compound sentences using joining conjunctions.

  • Differentiate this task for your students by providing a list of conjunctions to limit or expand conjunction choices, adding another clause to create a longer compound sentence or a complex sentence.

  • Extension: students look for pairs of sentences in their own work that can be made into compound sentences.

Activity 2: conjunctions bank

This activity can be implemented with a whole class or in small groups in any learning area. It will support students to become familiar with identifying conjunctions in texts, categorising the purpose of the conjunction and create a resource for students to draw on when composing compound and complex sentences.

  • Prepare two posters for display with the headings ‘conjunctions that join’ &‘conjunctions that add information’.

  • Identify familiar conjunctions with the class and record these on the appropriate poster, e.g. The conjunction ‘and’ joins two simple sentences in a compound sentence so it belongs with the ‘conjunctions that join’; The conjunction ‘before’ adds information to a main idea in a complex sentence so it belongs with the ‘conjunctions that add information’.

  • Introduce a shared verbal, visual or written text that contains compound and complex sentences (relevant to your students’ learning focus and context) and explain that students are looking for conjunctions in the text.

  • Model or guide the identification of the first few conjunctions that appear in compound and complex sentences in the text and ask students how they can be categorised. Record conjunctions on the correct poster and provide clarifications as necessary.

  • Follow-up the joint construction of the conjunction banks with a written response, e.g. ask students to write a compound or a complex sentence, in response to the shared text, using a conjunction from the banks.

  • Continue to add to the conjunction bank following or during shared verbal, visual or written texts and encourage students to refer the conjunction banks during written tasks.


Student resources