Jumpstart! Literacy

Key Stage 2/3 Literacy Games

Pie Corbett

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136775536
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This collection of simple to use, fun, multi-sensory games and creative lesson starters will jumpstart pupils enthusiasm for literacy learning. The `jumpstarts' cover:

• Warming up the word - spelling and word games
• Syntactic gymnastics - creating sentences and written style
• Games to stimulate - talk, drama and writing
• Quickfire whiteboard starters - to stimulate the imagination.

For use at Key Stages 2 & 3 (ages 7-14).

CHAPTER 1

Jumpstarting spelling

The activities in this chapter focus on improving spelling through a multi-sensory approach. Many children find spelling difficult and this hinders their ability to compose fluently. Spelling needs to be automatic (even if it is not a hundred per cent accurate!). A ten-minute daily session of whole-class spelling games can be a more effective way of helping children remember patterns than relying on a once-a-week spelling bash. Within a ten-minute session you could cover two or three games. Focus on words and patterns that they need, find difficult, or are the ongoing objective from your scheme.

RIGHT FROM WRONG

This game is quick and easy. It helps children look carefully at a spelling and try to decide whether or not it is accurate.

• Write on the whole-class board two or three ways of spelling a word, one of which is correct, e.g.
  wos woz was whas
• Ask the children to write on their mini- whiteboards the spelling which they think is accurate.
• Use words that the class often misspell, e.g. because, they, February, answer, ache, tomorrow, beginning, creature, mystery, chocolate, etc.
• Discuss the different methods that can be used to remember spellings. See what memory-joggers the children already use. How are they going to remember the words you’ve just discussed?
• Try to ensure that the most common ‘tricky’ words are really well known. Examples include:
  about, after, again, all, another, away, because, brother, called, can’t, could/ would/should, don’t, first, friend, girl, half, here, house, how, laugh, little, made, many, more, next, night, now, off, once, our, people, said, saw, school, sister, their, there, they’re, these, they, three, to, too, two, very, water, were, what, when, where, who, will, with, your

Encourage the children to use the tactics explored here when proof-reading their own writing. It can help if they get used to putting a dotted line under any word that they think looks ‘incorrect’ as they write. This means that they can keep on writing without losing pace,, and get used to returning to words after composition is complete.

PHOTOGRAPH

This game is simple to organise. It is a whole-class version of the famous ‘look/say/remember/ cover/think/write/check’ routine. It helps to strengthen children’s visual memory of different spellings.

• Write on the whole-class board a word that is commonly causing problems for the group, e.g.
  because
• Ask the children to look at the word and chant the letters, trying to remember what the word LOOKS like and how it is spelled. I often suggest that they ‘take a photo’ (i.e. make a visual or mental note). It is worth asking them to look and then close their eyes – can they SEE the word in their mind?
• Practise this a few times before eventually covering the word completely. Ask the class to write the word on their mini-whiteboards and then to check what they’ve written carefully. Does it look right? Does it read back correctly? If not, change it!
• You might like to try this game with some of the trickier keywords that children need to be able to spell. Examples include:
  above, across, almost, along, also, always, animals, any, around, asked, baby, balloon, before, below, better, between, birthday, both, brother, bought, brought, can’t, change, children, clothes, coming, didn’t, different, does, don’t, during, earth, every, eyes, father, first, follow, found, friends, garden, goes, great, halves, happy, head, heard, high, I’m, important, inside, jumped, knew, know, lady, leave, light, money, they, said, was, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, February, August, December

Try to encourage the children to use a variety of spelling strategies, e.g. visual memory-joggers, thinking about other words that may be related or similar, and so on.

RHYME IT

This game is important because it tunes children into listening carefully to the sounds in a word. Being able to spell by analogy (if I can spell ‘sick’ then I can probably spell ‘stick’) is a tactic that most of us use – probably without knowing it,

• Write a word on the whole-class board and ask the class to come up with as many rhyming words as they can in a given time, e.g. 30 seconds. For instance, you might write up
  feet
  and the children will then generate rhyming words, thinking about their spelling as they write them down. Of course, here there is a choice between ‘ee’, ‘ea’ or ‘e consonant e’ (sleet, meat, seat, treat, wheat, heat, complete, etc).
• Bring the class together and list the words they’ve come up with. (Sadly, on this occasion, there are no rules that help distinguish whether a word is spelt ‘eat’, ‘eef or ‘ete’. You just have to learn each spelling through constantly memorising, using and double- checking them.
• Try using the following words to generate rhymes:
  train, wheel, bone, light, flies, soap, seed, snail, sign, goat, cream, face, five, bowl, cake, hook, wing, car, sock, back, shout, wood, led, bad, toy, day, gate, see, try, blow, true
• An extension of this game is to provide a ‘rime’ and let the children generate words within a given time, e.g. ake = cake, lake, bake, make, take, mistake, etc. Try using the following ‘rimes’:
  ake, ame, ave, ace, ate, ail, ain, ine, ipe, ice, ight, oon, ool, oast, eet
• Play ‘rhyme chain’ – one child says a word and the next has to find a rhyme. Keep going till the rhymes run out.
• Those who struggle with spelling may need to play ‘phoneme fingers’. Like the rhyming activities above, this game helps to strengthen children’s listening skills in an effort to improve spelling. In this game, you say a word, e.g. ‘ship’ and the children have to count silently the number of phonemes (individual sounds) and hold u...