Teaching Literacy

The desire of every teacher is turning their pupils in proficient readers. In this power point presentation you can read about the different abilities your children have to develop. Check the things you need to deepen in your class!

Spanish-British integrated curriculum in Early Childhood Education

The Spanish-British integrated curriculum is a unique experiment within the Spanish state education system since 1996. Enghish teachers need to know very well this project to be able to achieve the agreed targets between England, Wales and Spain. Here you can enjoy a PowerPoint presentation which summarize how to teach trough topics, develop social skills and literacy skills. 

Kensuke's kingdom

Kensuke's Kingdom is a book for year 6 and it's worth to read it especially if you enjoy adventure stories. A young boy called Michael travel with his parents around the world until they have an accident, in which Michael and his dog fall down outside the Peggy Sue, thieir wonderful yatch. What happens to Michael after this is much interesting, but actually you have to read it to enjoy it!

Using tripline

When Michael is still with his family they visit a lot of places, why don't you use Tripline to point the places Michael saw? You can ask your children to make a small research about each place and write in this application some interesting facts they have found in the internet. In addition, they can add to their writing the information the book gives about the different places and some pictures too. Here you can see an example:

Besides, once your students has became familiar with this applicaion surely they would be glad to do something else with Tripline. It can be a good idea to ask them to create their own dream trip. They will put in practice their writing and enquiry skills and also they will develop their creativity. Here you can see another example!

 

The owl who was afraid of the night

Using Nearpod

For this fiction book for year 4 we have use Nearpod. It is a educational tool that enables collaborative work in the classroom while the teacher can take individual control of their students. At the end of each work session with this tool, the application allows the teacher to have detailed information on the development of the class showing individual results and also of the class as a whole.

I recommend it because with this application teachers can work multimedia content in real time with their students, individually or as a whole class. The application also allows synchronized presentations, quizzes, exercises, and also see the activity of students in class.

Here you have some pictures that show things Nearpod allows to do.

Try it! 

The drop goes plop (III)

The water cycle theatre 

One more way to understand a new knowledge is to form part of the new learning. You can do this organising a theatre with your learners. They will put in practice their communicative skills to organize who is each one and they will designed their own masks.

Let them to plan how to play the story, so they will think about how they have to talk and the movements they can do in each scene. 

It can be very funny! And surely it will be very difficult for them to forget the water cycle. 

The drop goes plop (II)

Using an O-W-L Chart

Another thing you can do with this story is use an O-W-L Chart to improve the comprenhension of the water cycle. These are the steps you have to follow:

1. Use the Symbol Maker to draw something you observe.
2. Go to writing View to ask a question about what you observed and find the answer to your question.

Here you can see an example of how to do it and review the whole procedure with your children. You can find the O-W-L Chart in Kidspiration,

The drop goes plop

The water cycle 

The drop goes plop is a great non-fiction book for year 2 which gives a choice to work the water cycle. You can show this cycle to your pupils in a more visual way using Notebook or Kidspiration,

Don't forget the written view!

Besides, it would be nice that your children will do their own water cycle. For this they can find support in the VCOP pyramid you can design as we have seen previously in other stories.

I spy an alphabet in art

Playing "I spy with my little eye"

I spy an alphabet in art is a wonderful non-fiction book for year 1 which you can use with your pupils to play the game "I spy with my little eye". You work at the same time the alphabet and famous artworks.

You should think what you are going to ask the children to elicit each word.

- What can you see?

- What are the people doing?

- And what are they using to playing footbal?

- And what is the first letter in ball?

It is a great idea to have the different artworks in Notebook so everybody can see and pariticipate in the game. 

The true story of the three little pigs

The true story of the three little pigs works the value that appeareances are deceptive and also that we can't believe all that people say to us, because each one has its own version and we should listen to everybody. 

Using a Venn diagram

This time we have used Kidspiration and we have decided to employ a visual organiser called Venn diagram, a good tool to show the similarities and differencies and the things in common between the traditional story and the one we are talking. 

The best Kidspiration has is that you can use the written view, it means that you can explain all you want to say with the words and pictures used in the Venn diagram. 

Won't you dare to do this with your children? You can ask them to write the similarities, the differences and what both of them have in common in a sheet of paper. 

Lazy Jack

Lazy Jack is a fiction book for year 3 your children will enjoy so much. Besides, it has many possibilities for them. In this case we have decided to focus on doing a character analysis. 

For this we have a specific map which facilitatates the description of the character. Children have to follow the next steps: 

Character Analysis

1. Use pictures and words to describe a character's actions. An action can be a character's thinking, conversation with anocher character o something the character did. 

2. What can you infer from the character's action? What character traits does the action show? 

3. Switch to writing View to add more details about the character. Include the example and page number from the book. 

In addition, you can create a big hat using cardboards and write a brief and a clear analysis of the main character. It will be a great support for their writing and also for remember the story.

For doing this first choose your adjectives (Kidspiration is a good tool for doing your planning).

Secondly write a draft about the character analysis.

Finally create your own hat with your character analysis.

Drama techniques

Drama techniques which focus on getting across meaning with body, as well as words, are very useful for the language classroom.

These techniques:

• Encourage creativity of thought
• Appeal to reluctant speakers
• Appeal to the more ‘physical’ learner
• Reinforce understanding of language as a way to communicate meaning

Why don't you dare to do drama techniques with your students? 

1. Show the different posibilities to your learners
2. Let them to choose in groups one drama technique 
3. Let them decide what scene they want to perform

Here you can see an example of a frozen scene:

The very hungry cartepillar (VI)

Working with songs

You can use a song to motivate your children and invent movements and gestures to interpret the lyrics, your children will enjoy and you too!

The very hungry cartepillar (V)

Family words

In this book you can find so many family words that you can make a table to organise the vocabulary. It is very useful, you won't forget anything that could be an important learning for your pupils. 

The very hungry caterpillar (IIII)

VCOP Pyramid

The VCOP pyramid is an excellent way of helping children to see what they need to do their writing better. It can be used as a desk-top reminder/reference point for your children, why don't you use it? Here you have an example with the vocabulary, connectives, openers and puctuation that appears in The very hungry caterpilar.

The lower down the pyramid you go, the more sophisticated the writing should be!

The very hungry caterpillar (III)

More about butterflies

As teachers we can do an investigation or look for interesting books according to the topic we work with our students. In this case, you can see a list of non-fiction and fiction books about the butterfly life cycle. You only have to choose the year and settle your own library, so children will deepen in the topic if they are really interested. 

The very hungry caterpillar (II)

Butterfly life cycle 

If you work The very hungry caterpillar with your students you have to use an effective way to show your pupils how the butterfly life cycle is. Here you have an example:

Also it will be great to show the shame butterfly life cycle with text under each picture, it will help children to understand this procedure at the same time they notice language. 

But it will so much better if you let your children make their own butterfly life cycle in written view. They should find support in the VCOP pyramid, so they can produce language in a correct and tidy way. For this you can make groups and give them some cardboards to write a sentence in each one. 

The very hungry caterpillar

Activities

Are you thinking about activities you can do with your pupils after reading this book? Check out the following ones!

Activity 1 - What does the very hungry caterpillar eat today?

Children have to drag both the correct day of the week and the fruit the very hungry caterpillar ate this day.The goal of the activity is that the children should be able to recognize the written words of days of the week and fruits.

We can use questions like:

- What day is today? 

-  Can you find the word for ‘Monday’?...

-  What does the caterpillar eat on Monday?...

-  Can you find the word for Apple?...

- Can you put them in their boxes?

Activity 2 - Guessing what word is 

The teacher plays the drum a number of times according to the syllables of a word choosen and children have to identify what the word is. 

In the case in which there are several words with the same number of syllables, we can help children identify the word using some clues: the final sound of the word, the first letter,...

Activity 3 - I spy...

Children have to guess the word seeing the picture and write it in the spaces. It can be more than one possibility for each picture.

For working with this activity we use the idea of “I spy with my little eye something that…”

Examples of clues:

· It´s in the picture

· Ends with the letter …

· Has the letter … in it

· Has … letters

· Fits in the sentence: …

Activity 4 - Rhyming words

The words fat and big are very important in the story. For this reason the teacher gives children the possiblily to find words that rhymes with them.

The teacher will interact with the children asking questions like:

-       What is this? Can you read the word?

-       And wig rhymes with fat? Mm… And with big? Wig- big.

-       Can you say the middle sound of wig? And the final sound? Can you say both together?

-       Can you say the middle sound of big? And the final sound? Can you say both together?

Activity 5 - Point the words

In this activity, we work with high frecuency words related with the story “The very hungry caterpillar”. We use a Word Wall, and the children have to point specific words, acording to the following intructions:

-       Can you point a word that ends with the letter “e?”

-       Can you point a word that starts with the letter “c”?

-       Can you point a word that has two syllables?

-       Can you point a word that means “very small”?

-       Can you point a word that makes sense in this sentence: “he was ___ very hungry”?

-       Can you point a compound word?

Activity 6 - Do you remember the story?

Children have to listen carefully to the teacher when she read a word. Then, the whole class will discuss where we should put this word: at the begging, at the middle or at the end. Finally the teacher will put the word in the correct box. 

We can use questions like:

- When appear the word ‘egg’?...

- Can you find the word “ice-cream”? Can you stand up and point it?...

- How was the caterpillar at the beginning? Tiny, isn’t it? And when it ate so much food, how was it? So we put “big” in the beginning or the middle?

- Can you drag the word for me?...