This quick post was written in response to an email I received asking for a little more information.
The ‘Everyday Reading Wall’.
Today we started a new ‘Language Experience’ little book. Having just completed our first book, it was time to start our ‘Everyday Reading Wall’. The reading wall is created from the previous class made sentences and read everyday. Reading games are played using the vocabulary. As we write more sentences, and create more little books, our ‘Reading Wall’ grows.
What is a sentence?
Today’s question for the children was: What is a sentence? I want my students to use their inquiring minds, so each day we have questions to answer. The children are exposed to writing, and books everywhere in the classroom. They looked at books, displays, and shared their ideas with each other. Looking carefully at sentences ‘around them’, they came up with the following ideas which were shared with the grade.
A sentence says something.
A sentence is made of words.
There are gaps between words.
A sentence can be read.
A sentence ends with a fullstop dot.
Our New Sentence
Today the children came up with a new sentence for our sentence strip board. Once we have four sentences, a new ‘Language Experience’ book will be made, and sent home to read. Using the children’s collective knowledge they collaborated as a grade to write the following sentence. We copied ‘school’ from the reading wall. It was great to see the children referring to ‘words around the room’ for support.
The children sounded and stretched words long, and said them short. They ‘listened to their own voice as they sounded’, looked at the alphabet tool cards, and shared their ‘thinking aloud’. These are strategies I model everyday. What a wonderful attempt they made at writing the word learn. Once again writing spacers were used to create the gaps between words. These are magnetic spots for the whiteboard.
Finally the children were given the sentence to trace. Having taught how to write an ‘a’ and ‘o’, I was interested to see how they formed these letters. I use the dotted Victorian script for this activity.
Hope this helps.
Cheers Nina
Nina Davis: Teaching & Learning in Australia 