Week 4

This week at Thumbs Up group...................

Groups One and Two have learning about 'loud' and 'quiet' speech sounds.  For example, the sounds made by the letters B, D and V are 'loud' sounds and you can feel them in your throat.  The sounds made by the letters P, T, and F are 'quiet' sounds that we make at the front of our mouth.

                                

Group 3 have been splitting words into sounds - we call this segmenting.  They played a lotto game where you take turns to find a picture that matches with your card, then you have to find all the sounds in your word before you get to keep the card.  The game took a REALLY long time to finish, but we had fun!

     It has been another busy week for the three Thumbs Up groups.  Group one practised listening for words in sentences a few more times, then moved on to listening to the syllables within words.  We clapped out the syllables in our names  then moved on to clapping lots of words and using counters to see how many syllables the words had.  We found that MON-KEY has two syllables, BUT-TER-FLY has three syllables and CAR has just one.   Next week we will be playing a syllables snakes and ladders game.


     Group two have been listening for rhyming words again.  They have played match-up games and done some colouring activities to practise identifying rhyming sounds.  Next week they will be moving on to generating their own rhymes with some rhyme story telling....... WATCH THIS SPACE!


     Group three had fun this week with "Metal Mike".  Mrs Wallwork said some sounds and the children took it in turns to blend the sounds together into words.  If the students got the word right they were allowed to 'feed' the picture card into Metal Mike's mouth.  He loved eating the B-O-X but not the B-U-G !!

Term 4 has begun!

All three Thumbs Up groups met this week.  As most of the students are new to our phonological awareness groups we started by talking about skills that are important for us to learn - speaking and listening.  We discussed how important it is to hear and say the sounds in words so that we can learn to read and write well.


Group one had fun playing with musical instruments.  We copied each other's rhythm and used the instruments to give instructions.  It was fun to listen for bells, claps and whistles that told us to walk, stop and jump.  Now we had practised being good listeners, we listened to Mrs Wallwork telling a story and then we rang a bell once for every word we heard in a sentence.  Everyone was REALLY good and we gave each other a big thumbs up!


Group two used the instruments to practice listening and following instructions too.  Then we listened to a rhyming story and stood up whenever we heard a rhyme. That was fun!  We were so good that we played a game of rhyme lotto.  Grace was the winner, we all gave her a thumbs up.


Group three looked at lots of pictures of words made up of 2 or 3 letter sounds (phonemes).  We found the beginning sounds, the ending sounds and some of us even found the middle sounds.  We found the sounds in 'easy' words like D-O-G and C-A-T, then we moved on to harder words like SH-E-D and CH-I-CK.  Finally we looked at some tricky words like L-A-M-P and D-R-U-M.  Everyone tried really hard!  Next time we will be thinking about 'blends' like BR, BR, CL.

Term 4 - coming soon......

Term 2 2011

Lots of learning has been happening at Thumbs Up Group in the first two weeks of Term 2.  Some children have moved to new groups so that everyone is practising the right set of phonological skills.

This term, red group have been focusing on rhyme.  They have listening to stories with rhyme, played rhyme games and talked about rhyming words. Red group are going to make a rhyme book to take home to share and show what they have been learning about.


Blue group started the term by practising listening for ending sounds.  They raced each other to place pictures in the right place to match up the sounds at the end of words.  The group was so good at this that they have already moved on to medial sounds.  At the last session, they played a seaside board game that was so much fun they have asked to play it again!  Each player has a counter, you have to roll a dice and look carefully at the picture you land on.  When you have worked out what the middle vowel sound is you have to put a counter on a beach towel.  The first person to have a counter on all five towels is the winner!


Green group and yellow group have been practising blending and segmenting.  Blending is when you can put sounds together to make words and segmenting is when you can split words into sounds.  Sometimes it is tricky to spilt a word into all its sounds. For example;

JUMP   does not contain three sounds     J - UM - P 

   JUMP    contains four sounds        J - U - M - P

Everyone in both groups is getting better at this skill and we will be practising................. A LOT!

This week at Thumbs Up

All the groups met this week and we had fun in the Paua pod which is a little room next to the library.

Red group had a musical theme this week.  They played "musical chairs in a line" and had to answer quick fire questions about who was at the beginning of the line, who was in the middle and who was at the end.  Sometimes Mrs Wallwork tried to trick them by asking them to turn their chairs around but everyone was very clever and EVERYONE got all the answers right!  Red group also played some syllables games this week.  Syllables snakes and ladders, syllables lotto and syllables stepping stones were all great fun and gave everyone a chance to clap out words.
Nice work Red group.



Blue group also played syllables snakes and ladders this week.  The game has the same rules as ordinary snakes and ladders but when you land on a square you have to clap the syllables of the picture.  On Thursday, Blue group played rhyme games.  First they made pairs of picture cards with words that rhyme.  Next they played rhyme snap.  Jamie hit the table so hard that he hurt his hand!







Green group played I-spy with a difference.  Instead of "I-spy with my little eye, something beginning with..." we said "I spy with my little eye, something ending with..."  It was quite tricky but is a good game to get your brain working hard and we will be playing this game again.  Green group spent some time lookin gat this blog on Wednesday.  They also made a Voki character - click on the Green group tab near the top of the page and see what they made.

Yellow group also made a Voki character on Wednesday.  Their character is on the special Yellow group page (click on the Yellow group tab near the top of the page).  They also played and special I-spy game, this time blending sound together to make a word.  Everyone was super-fast at this game and Mrs Wallwork is going to find something even more challenging for next week.

See you next week!

Welcome to Green Group and Yellow Group

Today was the first day that Green Group and Yellow Group met in the Paua Pod.  We discussed how to be a good listener and talked about what it mean to give someone a 'thumbs up' when they have done a good job.  Both groups played a listening game where they had to listen carefully to a description, then put a counter onto the picture of the right animal.  Everyone showed excellent listening skills, well done everyone!

Welcome to Thumbs Up group

On Tuesday, Red group and Blue group met for the first time in Room 7 at Upper Harbour Primary School.  We talked about what we are going to be learning about at Thumbs Up group.  We discussed about how important it is to be a good listener and what a good listening looks like.

We played a game with animal picture cards.  Mrs Wallwork placed the pictures around the room where we could see them.  We took it in turns to make an animal noise and the rest of the group had to stand next to the picture of the right animal.  Everyone did a really good job and it was great practice for the listening we will be doing next time.

Thumbs Up to everyone!!