Thursday, May 17, 2012

First steps towards reading....

Some of the children have reached another level i the classroom and are now able to use our Moveable Alphabet to sound out words..

What is a Moveable Alphabet (MA)? It is a large wooden box divided into compartments containing the lower case letters of the alphabet cut out in plastic. The vowels are blue and the consonants are pink or red.



I pick a picture card and place it on the top left hand side of the lid of the MA box. I ask the child to identify the picture and the first sound of the word. I then ask him to find the letter coresponding to the sound. We move on to the 2nd sound and to the 3rd sound (we only use 3 letter words). I then read each sound slowly and then a bit faster to teach the child how to sound the word. "Today, you have sounded the word CAT! This is how you write CAT".. You should see the pride in their eyes!!! This is now one of the most popular activities for 3 or 4 of my little angels!! So I actualy have quite a lot of work in front of me this week end , as we are running out of picture cards corresponding to the letters we have learnt together so far!!!!   Check our other posts on our work in literacy and sounding words  here  and  here.