Friday 3 August 2012

Watch Out, Bats About!

Our peg bats are hanging about in our classroom today.

 We practised our careful tracing and cutting skills to make these bats. I was extremely impressed with the ability of my class of 5 year olds to follow the several different steps to make them successfully. Some bats are hanging upside down and some are flying.

We made these bats to support our phonics programme. This week we were learning how to read and write 'at' words. I explicitly teach several phonics sessions each week focusing on saying, reading, writing, and revision of previous lessons. 

As we have worked our way through the alphabet and several common digraphs, we are now learning how to put these sounds together when reading and writing. One of the strategies I use to do this is called 'roboting'. A robot can only make one sound at a time and must use his arms when he talks. So we move our robot arms when we say each sound (phoneme). The movement helps make it easier for children to say each sound separately, bat becomes b-a-t-bat. 

I love to make a big point about how we can use our robot arms to sound out tricky words when we are reading and writing. The children quickly begin to use this strategy independently. (Of course - there are some words that can't be 'roboted', and some that the children have not yet been taught all of the digraphs or trigraphs that make up that word.
I have printed out these 'at' words to hang with our bats. We also read this funny bat poem.

I love peg animals. Check out other peg animal craft that I have done with my class:
More bats (and a step by step tutorial).


Check out these posts to learn more about our phonics programme and crafts.
Pink Peg Pigs - 'ig' words.
Dalmatian Dogs - 'og' words.
Happy Hens - 'en' words. 
Lovely Ladybugs - 'ug' words. 



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