Why not use goop for a multisensory penmanship activity. Basically just took some cornstarch, food colouring and snack bags to make this. Using the grass, ground and sky method in teaching the letters. After mixing I place them into a larger ziplock bag so you can use a dry eraser marker to practice your letters. You could just have them use their fingers to practice. The ways are countless!!!!
I never knew I had a learning disability until I was 32 after taking the Orton Gillingham tutoring training program. Yes, it's quite sad that it took me so long to actually figure out that I wasn't that dumb in reading and writing english. I hated writing and reading because throughout my childhood all I ever received were satisfactory grades. I devel Kids love to play with playdo! They can have lots of fun using this to learn and practise the alphabet. I use the grass, ground and sky method to show kids how letters are formed and spaced out. It's easier to explain letters like p, g, that goes into the ground. Letters like i, j have dots in the sky. They can use their fingers or practice holding a chopstick, pencil or anything else that can create a ridge into the playdo. I couldn't find brown playdo so I just made my own with some coffee powder, flour, water and oil. I could've used some melted chocolate too!! Headbanz is a fun game I play with my students to review their sounds and spelling rules using their visual drill deck cards. I use this game as the visual and auditory drill section of the lesson. It helps them ask questions or use the sounds in a fun way. One version is that he will have to say 3 words with the sound that I have on my headband - I try to guess the sound. For more advance students you can make it more challenging to have them say words with the sound in certain positions - beginning/middle or end of the word. For example: I'm wearing 'sh' - student says words with the sound at the end of the word - dish, wish, fish.
A fun way to practice and build vocabulary with building lego trees. This was inspired by the app "Word Stack". The student will get a turn creating the bottom of the tree and then take turns in writing a word that means the same or a rhyming word to stack onto the tree. After completing several trees, I do an extension activity where they can do some creative writing. They can make fun sentences by only taking a word from the top of 3 or 4 trees. Another fun extension activity is to create a paragraph for each tree by using the words. You can create very funny stories! Here is a fun way for kids to learn the division concept. I like to create a visual so every time they need to divide they can think of this model and easily apply the division technique. This model also will build their mental math skills. Think of dividing as having a house with friends at the door and inside the house there are a batch of yummy cookies to be divided equally amongst the friends. The attic number are the amount of cookies that each friend will get. If you have a lego house or even a playhouse, place a few figurines by the door and cookies inside the house. Try a few problems with the figurines, house and cookies - also write the different forms of how a division problem can be seen. Let them practice completing the division problems in the various forms. Over the years, I have incorporated the use of Ipad apps into the OG lesson. It has helped me get organized and definitely helped keep the student's attention. Most of my students have an Ipad at home so they enjoy playing with new apps that they can also play at home too. I'm always in search of new apps on a weekly basis to change it up. Ipad can be used for transitions from one activity to another. And it is a great tool to use to help students who struggle to write and read. There are plenty of apps that sparks the creative mind to write stories with their own animation and voice. The read along stories are useful since the child can control the speed and practice reading with someone (ipad). I have complied a current list of apps I use -
* Study Flash - cue card app for the visual and reading drills - can create one for each student and I use the red cards for sight words and the other colored cards for phonetic words - can highlight cards that students need to work on- so great for diagnostic lesson *Toontastic - create your own cartoons with voice - students can create phonetic themed cartoons *Talking Carl - fun for kids to hear a cartoon character repeat things they've said - great for auditory drills *Educreations - create powerpoint lessons with voice - use it as a whiteboard - I've used this app to teach sight words and spelling rules *Goofy Mad Libs - create fun stories and practice nouns, adjectives, adverbs, verbs *Hangman - fun app instead of playing on a board or paper *Wurdle - fun boogle game which is multiplayer - *Wordstack - practicing synonyms * TED, Science Illustrated, National Geographic Weird but true - interesting reads During the hot days of summer - a fun sensory activity to review sounds can be a water balloon bingo game. Students use chalk to draw out their bingo board and sounds onto the sidewalk. Remind them to repeat and spell the sounds as many ways as they can. This is one of my many variations to do the traditional visual and auditory drill on paper. Instead of just calling out the sounds, I had a bag full of pictures where the student get to pick one out and identify the picture and throw 1 water balloon onto the sound. For example: the students picks out a picture of a 'car'. They tell me what the picture is "car". I ask them to throw a water balloon onto the beginning sound which is 'c'. When they throw it on to the sound it disappears. When they make a line disappear they got bingo. Play for blackout!! You can use this also to practice specific sounds also such as word ratio charts. I had some leftover water balloons and let them do their spelling drill onto the concrete with chalk. They helped me erase it by throwing the leftover water balloons onto what they wrote. The only downfall was that we were a little wet for the rest of the lesson but it got them very excited to do their visual, auditory and spelling drills. One way that I have spiced up the traditional OG visual/auditory drill is to make it into a treasure hunt game. I start by doing the auditory drill by telling them to repeat and spell the sounds as many ways as they can onto a piece of paper. After I have said about 15 sounds I give them 5 minutes to find things with that sound around the room or a quick field trip outside. I give them a goal that if they find at least 10 different sounds I will let them go into the treasure drawer to pick out a prize. If you don't have a treat to give them you can also offer them that they can play a game of their choice if they complete the target amount. My students find this fun because they are moving around and they are having fun snooping around the tutor centre. It is always nice to see them repeat the sound while they are walking around the room finding it. For example - I asked them to find the 'b' sound. They see a tennis ball on the floor. They will need to write the word ball down to count as a point. Another variation is to use a digital camera to take pictures of the sounds. So they take pictures of all the 'b' sounds - balls, bags. Then make a sound collage. I wanted to create a game that students can use to review and also get a good workout at the same time. Then I thought about how popular ipad games are... I came up with making a life sized angry bird game. I'm sure you have all the things already around your home. If not improvise!! Here is what I did: I took some empty boxes of all shapes and sizes and wrapped them up with colored paper. I bought some posted notes to stick onto the boxes. I took a large angry bird stuffy (from my kids) and used some random figurines as the piggies for bonuses. For the math version, I randomly wrote out numbers onto the posted notes and stuck them onto the boxes. The student gets to set up the obstacle where they will be trying to knock down. I gave them 3 throws from a distance and they would need to record each box amount that they knock down. The figurines are a bonus of 10 points. I gave them a prize when they reached 100 points in the round. You can vary this depending on what concept you are teaching - fractions, decimals, percentage, skip counting, factors, etc. You can also have a discussion on the shapes - cylinders, cubes, etc. For the language version, I randomly wrote out different sounds onto the posted notes. I gave them 3 throws from a distance and for each box they knock down, they would need to write a word accordingly to the posted note stuck onto it. If they knocked down a figurine then it's a bonus and they get to write any word of their choice. Once they get a list of 10 words then they get a prize. You can use the words they recorded down to do some creative writing too! Another way to vary is to stick on visual pictures instead of sounds. This can be played with several players - one can be the recorder, one can be the thrower and one can be the set-up. I just can't wait until they go back to school telling their friends about this life sized angry bird game!! Who does that!!! lol |
AuthorDora Cheung - Certified OG Tutor, Masters of Educ. Admin., Early Childhood Education, +20 yrs of teaching experience. Married with 3 boys - 13 yrs, 11 yrs and 8 yrs old. Archives
December 2019
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