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Amazing Animals

Objectives

To begin to notice incorrect attempts at words.

To write simple sentences with a capital letter and a full stop.

Resources

Vocabulary

Words in bold can be found in the 📄 Year 1 English Glossary

Today's Lesson

What to Get Ready

Read the section ‘Fantastic Plants and Animals’ from Fantastic Nature.

Print out a sheet of lined paper from the 📄 Lined Paper Resource that suits the size of your student's handwriting.

If your student is in need of extra support, you may choose to write the sentence starter ‘It has’ on the mini whiteboard.

Once your student has completed this lesson, it would be really beneficial if your student could read the clues they have written to another person, e.g. friend/peer. You may want to organise someone to be ready for this task at the end of the lesson.

Write the words from 'Blend to Read' (below) on 📄 blank flashcards.

Phonics - Quick Fire!

Quick recognition of sounds.

Phonics - New Learning

In this lesson, your student will be revising some of the new flashcards from Steps 19 to 23.

Ask your student to write on their mini whiteboard as many ways as they can think of for writing the sound ‘j’ as in ‘jam’. They may write: ‘j’, ‘g’, ‘ge’, and/or ‘dge’. Remind your student of any they haven’t written.

All of the words in today’s phonics activities will have the sound ‘j’ in them.

Phonics - Blend to Read

judge (3) | sledge (4) | charge (3) | stage (4)

Phonics - Split to Spell

These words have ‘g’ in: germs (4) ) gem (3)

These words have ‘ge’ in: enlarge (5) | fringe (5) cage (3)

These words have ‘dge’ in: badge (3) | sludge (4)

Phonics - Extra Support

Show your student how to blend to read/split to spell the first word in each activity.

Phonics - Extra Challenge

badger (4) | German (5)

Challenge your student to write the words without Sound Beds to help them.

Phonics - Apply

Write this caption on the mini whiteboard: a giant does magic on the edge of the gorge. Then ask your student to read the caption.

If your student finds caption reading easy, rather than you writing the caption, you can say the caption and they can write it on the whiteboard.

Reading & Writing - Introduction

Make sure your student is able to see their 📄 Helpful Strategies and the 📄 Reading Detective Prompts.

‘Take a Peek’ at the section ‘Fantastic Plants and Animals’ from Fantastic Nature. Tell your student that this is another information book.

Ask, ‘What do you think we will find out about when we read it? How do you know that?’

Ask your student to look at the Contents page.

Talk through the following questions:

On which page do you think we will find out about plants’ or animals’ sizes?
What do you think the page with the title *What a Stink!*might be about?
On which page do you think we will find out about eating habits?

Next, support your student as they read the section ‘Fantastic Plants and Animals’. Prompt your student with helpful strategies where appropriate and praise them when they notice their mistakes.

You could say, for example, ‘You knew that didn’t sound right. Well done, detective! How could you make it sound right?'

Reading & Writing - Extra Support

Share the reading with your student and demonstrate good pace, expression and Reading Detective skills.

Reading & Writing - Extra Challenge

Ask your student to read like a storyteller. Can they make the interesting facts sound even more interesting using their voice?

For example, looking at the sentence, ‘This whale is the biggest animal ever!’ you could ask, ‘Which words could you add emphasisto in this sentence?’

Speaking and Listening

Play ‘Guess the animal’ with your student.

Secretly choose an animal. Give your student clues one at a time about that animal. After each clue your student can try to guess your animal.

For example, if your animal was a lion you could say:

My animal has four legs.
My animal is furry.
My animal has sharp claws.
My animal roars.

When you student has guessed correctly you can swap roles.

Explain to your student that at the end of fact books made for children there are often games to play. Together, look through Fantastic Nature seeing if you can spot the games.

Explain to your student that today they will be making their own game. For this game, they will be writing their own animal clues for ‘Guess the animal’.

Ask, ‘Which animal would you like to choose?’

Once your student has chosen their animal, it may be helpful to find a picture for them to have in front of them.

Help your student to think of a possible clue for their chosen animal. Ask them to draw a quick picture or word on a sticky note to help them remember this clue.

For example, if their clue is that their animal has a sharp horn, they could draw a horn on the sticky note or write the word ‘horn’.

Repeat until they have at least three clues. If your student is ready for an extra challenge, ask them for at least five clues.

Lay out the sticky note ‘clues’ in front of your student. Explain that to make the game fun, it is best to use the most obvious clues last and the least obvious clues first. This will keep people guessing longer!

Help your student to order the clues by moving the sticky notes.

Reading & Writing - Main Activity

Explain that all of your student's clues now need to be turned into sentences. All of these sentences will start with the words, ‘It has’.

Help your student turn the clue on their first sticky note into a sentence. Encourage them to add in detail.

For example, turning the label ‘horn’ into, ‘It has a curved horn.’

Say the sentence out loud with your student first. Repeat until your student knows the sentence well. Your student might like to say the sentence whilst counting the number of words on their fingers.

Ask your student to say and then write the first word of their sentence on the sheet of lined paper. Then ask them to place their finger next to it to make a space before they begin writing the second word.

Once the sentence is written, ask your student to place a finger under each word in turn while they read the sentence out loud, to check it makes sense.

Repeat with the other ‘clues’ they had written on sticky notes.

Once the clues are complete it would be really beneficial if your student could play ‘Guess the animal’ using their clues with a friend/peer.

Give your student time to practise reading out their clues first. Remind them to pause after each clue and to ask the listener to guess the animal!

Reading & Writing - What to Notice

While they are doing this activity, remember to praise your student for the skills they are using.

For example:

‘I can see you are thinking carefully to get the best order of clues.’

‘You stretched out that word really well to hear all the sounds.’

‘You wrote that word so neatly - well done!’

Handwriting and Spelling

Explain to your student that they are going to continue learning words from the 📄 High Frequency Word List.

Look at the 📄 Weekly Spelling Activities. Choose one activity and use this to help your student practise their three spellings today.