I can extend my sentences...

This year, it seems my year 2 class are struggling to extend their sentences, and although they are (mostly) able to write a simple sentences, I wanted to think of some activities where the children could practise extending their sentences independently.

This is what I came up with...

 For my lower attainers, I wanted the children to continue parasitising structure of a simple sentence.  In small sandwich bags I put in cut up sentences and coloured coded them according to difficultly.  Some of the difficult sentences included 'and' as their connective.  The children loved the element of challenge, and they also seemed to love the fact they were able to read the words easily.

 My middle attainers were given a sheet with the beginnings of a sentence on (all the sentences are based on the writing we were going to be doing at the end of the week.)  They then had a pot in the middle of the table with connectives in, they had to choose a connective and then extend their sentence using that.  The children loved the fact that no matter what connective they picked out, they could extend their sentence with it!  It really worked as a scaffold to get the children to give more information in their sentence.

My high attaining children had a lot less structure.  They had 3 pots in the middle of the table, connectives, verbs and openers.  Their challenge was to write a sentence which included all the words that they had picked out.  They loved the freedom of the activity and they were coming up with sentences that they were very proud of!







So...thats all for now! My children did love these activities and I am going to see if I can put these out more permanently in my continuous provision.

Literacy Stations

My summer was basically spent researching the 'literacy workstation'. Something which, in Britain I have not yet come across outside of the Foundation Stage classroom.  Sure we have Plan, Learn (Do), Review, writing area's, reading corners etc.  But literacy workstations, not so much.

My understanding is that you have a selection of literacy activities available for the children to choose from during independent learning time or during guided reading time.  These activities vary greatly, but some of the best ones I have come across are as follows:

Scoop and Spell

Scoop and Spell - where the children scoop out (using an ice-cream scoop) some scrabble letters.  I bought mind from eBay for around £4 (I bought the junior version as they are lower case letters).  Then the children simply make as many words as they can with the letters they have scooped out.  My children especially like the kinaesthetic aspect to this activity and they enjoy playing with the patterns in words.

Word Doctor

Word Doctor - A great game I found here: tunstalltimes blogspot Basically it's an independent activity where the children are able to dress in surgeons gear (i.e. a dust mast, green gloves and a white coat!) And use tweezers to put together words on bones which have been 'broken'.  Proved a real hit with my children who again love the kinaesthetic element to it.

Trash or Treasure

Treasure or Trash - We all know the familiar game from Letters and Sounds.  This version can be found at: Teachers Pet: Activities which is a great website.  You have to pay for the activities part of the site, displays is free, but I would recommend signing up, I use it all the time for resources.  Anyway, the workstation versions is literally a bin form the pound store for the Trash and a basket for the Treasure.  I put in laminated coins which the children or I can change and the children simply work alone or with a friend to sort the treasure coins out.



Thats just some of the stations I have already set up, but I definitely have some more on the cards which I would like to try.  Hopefully i'll attach some photo's of the stations in action in my next post.