Cross the River

As part of our English module, there are various phonics videos we can view, to show us what effective phonics teaching looks like and how it is implemented.

I've just watched one, in which Foundation Stage children were playing a game called 'Cross the River', taken from 'Letters and Sounds' (pg 43). This activity is in the 'Oral blending & segmenting-tuning into sounds' section and this sections objective is to: Develop oral blending & segmenting of sounds in words.

There was a row of children on one side of the carpet, and a parallel row on the other side, in between these rows there was a blue blanket. The teacher had a troll puppet, whom the children needed to get permission off, before they could cross 'the river'.

The teacher handed each child an object such as a 'duck', 'peg', 'cup' or 'ship'. The children then all said "Please Mr Troll, can we cross your river?" To which the troll replied "only if you have a c-u-p".

The children had to listen to the sounds and think about them, then if they blended together to make the name of the object they had, then they got to jump across the river. The idea being that all the children get a turn to cross the river eventually, however sometimes this may mean repeating an item if a child hadn't recognised it the first time.

A good thing about this game is that it can be adapted easily for children of differing abilities, for example by including digraphs such as 'sh' for sh-i-p, and also trigraphs such as 'ear' for f-ear. For children of a lower ability, who are unable to either recognise the sounds, or blend them to form a word, pictures could be used in correlation, so the child hears the sounds and connects these to the image shown, which will match the object they have. This makes it an all inclusive activity which can be done with mixed ability children.

However a negative point, is that children of higher ability might get bored or frustrated as they have to sit and listen to the 'easy words' whilst waiting for their own, this could be solved by playing in ability groups, however it does mean that the 'lower ability' children won't, in this instance, benefit from the further knowledge of their peers.

Its amazing how much more beneficial it is watching a video of an idea or a game, rather than just reading or talking about it. It creates a much better visual in your mind, which you can recall on when required. I'm totally going to play this game when on placement!!

I'd like to think of how I could liven it up a bit though, as it was a bit repetitive, with the children and the troll using the same phrases each time...but then I guess, children need repetition...hmm!!

Next video...coming right up!!