ELF Module 4 – Animals

ELF Module 4 is themed around animals. Students continue to build their knowledge of initial sounds in words.

Learning Activities

1. What’s the sound Mr Wolf? A variation of this game is played which involves showing the student a phoneme card e.g. ch. The students say all the Spalding phonograms for the card and take 1 step forward for each sound.
2. Counting words in a sentence. Students are presented with words from a sentence out. Students are told the sentence and need to use their initial sounds and knowledge of punctuation (full stops and capital letters) to glue the words in order to make the sentence.
3. Initial sounds – students sort pictures by their initial sounds.
4. Cat’s cradle – this develops finger strength and mobility which is required for writing, cutting and gluing. Here is a video for you to try at home, there are other versions too. Cat’s cradle
5. Initial sounds – students are given real and nonsense words and are asked to write in the initial letter e.g. __ a t, make it say cat.
6. Handwriting – pirate r letters, these go down up and around (r h n m k b p).  We identify head, tail and body parts of letters. Students also identify words beginning with the letter sounds and write whole words into their books placing them correctly on the red and blue lines.
7. Alphabet – say the alphabet in order, be aware of l m n o p clarity. Students also identify vowel and consonant letters.
8. Language development – teachers read books to the students and discuss the content using Blanks Questions as a basis to extend language and vocabulary. Training in Blanks Questions is available at Blanks Questions Training
9. Write their first name and surname. The students initially trace the letter and learn where to place the letters on the red and blue lines. For many  students they have not been exposed to red and blue lines in Prep so this is a good introduction and will be built on in later sessions.
10. Sight words – students are exposed to and play games focusing on the Green words from Magic Words