The teacher can help children learn letters through various engaging games and activities like drawing letters in the air, recognizing cut-out letters by touch, and making letters out of clay. Games help consolidate learning and ensure children actively enjoy the process. The teacher must be aware of any children falling behind and provide extra support. Building a thorough foundation at this early stage is important before difficulties arise.
The teacher can help children learn letters through various engaging games and activities like drawing letters in the air, recognizing cut-out letters by touch, and making letters out of clay. Games help consolidate learning and ensure children actively enjoy the process. The teacher must be aware of any children falling behind and provide extra support. Building a thorough foundation at this early stage is important before difficulties arise.
The teacher can help children learn letters through various engaging games and activities like drawing letters in the air, recognizing cut-out letters by touch, and making letters out of clay. Games help consolidate learning and ensure children actively enjoy the process. The teacher must be aware of any children falling behind and provide extra support. Building a thorough foundation at this early stage is important before difficulties arise.
The teacher can help children learn letters through various engaging games and activities like drawing letters in the air, recognizing cut-out letters by touch, and making letters out of clay. Games help consolidate learning and ensure children actively enjoy the process. The teacher must be aware of any children falling behind and provide extra support. Building a thorough foundation at this early stage is important before difficulties arise.
The teacher can practise the shapes of the letters, by:
asking children to ‘draw’ them in the air
blind-folding children and give them letters cut out of fine sandpaper; they need to recognise the letters by touch make letters out of clay, dry them and play games recognising their sounds
Many games can be played that support the consolidation of learning and memorising consonants and vowels, and it is essential that children who are learning as second language speakers become actively involved and enjoy learning the letters.
If there are children who are not keeping up for any reason, the teacher needs to be aware and find ways to help them at this early stage when it is easier to deal with than later on. These children may need some extra help, going back to the stories that introduced each letter, and helping them to make the connections with the sound consciously.
It is also important that the teacher builds up a very thorough approach that supports the children to learn the letters with ease. It is far better to work more slowly and thoroughly at this stage, before the split comes between those children that can read and those who cannot.
Choose a word e.g. man and children must change the first letter to form another word. See how many words can be found. You can even allow nonsense words just for fun. E.g. man, can, ban, tan, lan, Dan, pan, etc.
. The teacher says a word e.g. ‘fish’ and the children must tell her the first sound and then the last sound.
. The teacher can ask the children to find words that begin with a particular letter. The children can also find groups of words that end with a letter. The teacher needs to give examples from words the children already know and perhaps even help the children to guess certain words by asking leading questions. She may even ask two children to help each other find words as the children often learn new
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words from their friends. By repeating the exercise daily the children improve and feel good about the number of words they know.
of one-syllable words (run, dot), two-syllable words (running, letter)
and later three-syllable words (happily, beautiful).
Where do you hear the ‘t’ in ‘top’, ‘rat’, ‘letter’?
. How many sounds in ‘mat’? m/a/t (3), ‘sock’? s/o/ck (3).
. Change the last letter to make a new word. Nonsense words
may be allowed. Man, mat, mad, map, mab. Fish, wish, dish, swish, mish-mash
. The teacher says a word e.g. ‘dog’ and the children must tell her the Angel Letter (vowel sound) that they hear.
. The teacher begins by saying “I spy (or see), with my little eye, something big (or small) beginning with the sound ‘b’. Answer: bush. Whoever guesses the object correctly has the next turn. OR On our walk I saw something beginning with the sound ‘p’. Answer: pig. Later the teacher can also use consonant blends e.g. ‘sh’ Answer: sheep.
The teacher needs to make Flash Cards of all the letters with the story-picture related to the letter on the back of the card. S/he shows a card, and the class (or the boys or girls, or the front row, next row, or a particular child) answers by making the sound of the letter. In this way s/he can practise regular recognition of the letters.
Usually the teacher draws a picture image that includes the letter and places it above the board in the classroom so that the children can see the whole alphabet and refer to these beautiful images at any time.
Once the letters are well established, the teacher can make flash cards with words, which the children have already learnt, on them.
Each child should have an envelope containing individual letters on cards for recognition of letters and word-building. Each child can then build his or her own words.
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In addition to the activities already mentioned, games involving Letter Cards for both letters and words can be used, allowing the children to work with a partner and test each other.
Games such as Memory involve having two sets cards mixed together, so there are two cards of the same letter (for all the letters). All the cards are placed face down and the children take turns. As a child turns over a card, they must name the letter that they see and then try and find the other card with the same letter. If they succeed they get another turn. If they do not get it right, it is the other child’s turn.
Snap can also be played. Each child has a set of cards with letters. They take turns to turn over a card and whenever they turn over the same card, the one who says Snap first wins the whole pile on the table. A simple Scrabble can be done in Grade 2 and upwards where they learn to build up words using one of the letters from the word that is already there as a base.
It is important to remember that teaching a letter with a beautiful story is not enough. The teacher must continually refer back to the letter and the story from which it came, repeating activities that involve using letters learnt previously in different ways. These games to practise the letters should be played daily so that the children continually revise those letters they have learnt.
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