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Phonics and Literacy through Arts and CraftsSpice up reading and writing activities!

Phonics and teaching English

In the UK, students in lower primary aresystematically taught phonics: how to learn lettersby sounds and sound combinations. Whenteaching English as a foreign language, teacherscan use phonics at any level in order to reinforcethe pronunciation of certain words and students’ reading skills in general.

Students who are introduced to phonics tend notto make the typical pronunciation mistakes whenreading that other learners of English make.

➜Phonics Flashcards

Engage your students in making alphabetflashcards. On one side they print or paint theletter in upper and lower cases. On the other side,they draw words beginning with the letter sound(the phoneme).

Letter A, for example, could include a picture of an apple, an ant or an alligator but not anaeroplane, Australia or an aunty as thepronunciation of A in the latter is not the same as the letter sound. Make two copies of eachflashcard and play Noisy Letters.

➜Noisy Letters*

Hand out alphabet flashcards

to your students. Give the

same letter to two students.

1

The students read what is ontheir card and then give it backto you.

2

Tell your learners to walk

around the room saying and

repeating the phoneme

represented on the card until

they find the person with the

same sound as them.

3

When they find the personthey get into pairs and try to the recall words on thealphabet flashcard.

4

*Activity taken from The National Literacy StrategyPhonics. Progression in Phonics: Materials for whole-classteaching, Department for Education and Skills, UK, 2000

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➜Phoneme Fans*

A phoneme fan is a series of letters printed onstrips of card. They are simple and fun to make.You can make phoneme fans with your students.Invent different colours and designs with theletters you want to use (e.g. n, g, t).

➜My Sounds Book

To help connect sounds and spelling, make asound book with your students. Decide whichwords and sounds to start with according to yourown teaching criteria, but take into considerationthat high frequency words are always useful. Forexample, the phoneme sound ‘two’ could includethe following words on the page entry: kangaroo,boot, shoe, new, blue, drew, through. Alwaysunderline the sound so that learners connectsound and spelling. Help your learners illustratetheir books by drawing pictures or cutting themout of magazines.

Here are some suggested words for Phone FansSay game:

fun, run, bin, win, log, jog, dog, frog, hot, pot,not, hit, sit, fit, bat, cat, fat, hat, etc.

Activity tip

*Activity taken from The National Literacy StrategyPhonics. Progression in Phonics: Materials for whole-classteaching, Department for Education and Skills, UK, 2000

Say a word out loud,

for example ‘sun’. 1

Write the first 2 letters on theboard and ask the learnerswhat sound goes at the end.

2

When they have told you, ask

them what an ‘n’ looks like by

holding up the appropriate

letter on the phoneme fan.

3

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➜Rhyming Words

Improve students’ pronunciation by teaching themrhyming words. Technically, a word that rhymeshas exactly the same sound at the end but adifferent stem or initial letters. For instance, tree,sea, monkey and me all rhyme even though theend spelling is different in each case.

➜Story Mobiles

Having read a story to your class, students make a hanging mobile to depict the story.

Phonics and Literacy through Arts and Crafts

Reading and Story Activities

➜ Illustrations

Illustrations are an ideal way of linking Literacywith Arts and Crafts.

• Students can illustrate characters from a storybook and write a summary of their likes anddislikes, physical descriptions or personalities.

• Alternatively, different groups can illustrate ascene from the text and write a line or two ofaccompanying text (depending on their level).

• Learners can design alternative cover illustrationsand titles. They could make up a new front coverfor the story book and these can be put togetherfor a collective display.

The Rhyming Tree

1. Design a tree which has groups of rhymingwords hanging from its branches.

2. Students can then write sentences to includewords from the same branch.

3. A sentence must be grammatically correct,but not necessarily contextual or make greatsense. For example: A monkey is in the tree with melooking at the sea.

4. Illustrate the sentences with pictures.

Suggested activity

➜Mini-books

First prepare a worksheet

which contains text boxes

of simple sentences from the

story you will read.

1

When students listen to thestory (for the second time),they put the story in thecorrect order by writing anumber in the corner of thetext box.

2

Then they cut out the text

boxes and stick them into a

booklet. A4 pages folded in

half and stapled together are

the simplest.

3

Students illustrate their mini-book and make a display.

4

Divide the story into parts and give

each group a different section.

1

The learners readthis section again

and design a mobileaccordingly.

2

The mobile cancontain elements

such as characters, objects, emotions and landscapes.

3Finally, pupils tell their part of the story to the rest

of the class.

4

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➜Shared writing

Shared writing involves the teacher and studentscomposing a coherent text together. The teacherwrites and provides the structure or support forlearner’s language and ideas. In this way ourlearners can see the process of writing (thinking ofideas, putting those ideas into sentences and thenconstructing a text) modelled for them. Hopefully,they will absorb the mechanics of this process forfuture individual writing tasks.

➜Painting self-portraits

It is fun to copy the style of an artist (Picasso, Van Gogh, Dali) having studied the painter or aftera visit to a museum. Make a wall display of theportraits and select a simple shared writingactivity to do with them. Provide the followinggap fill (structure).

This is me

I have got eyes and hair.

I have got a mouth and a nose.

My face is .

We are alike

We both have and .

Guess who?

This person has eyes and hair.

He/she has a mouth and a nose.

Who is it?

➜Art postcard collections

Art postcards can be found in museums,bookshops, stationary stores and as greetingscards. They are a useful teaching resource and an aesthetic complement to any classroom. Try to collect a variety of postcards of differentartists, styles and art periods and create a tabledisplay. Allow students to pick them up and studythem in detail. Experiment with some of thefollowing shared writing activities alwaysbrainstorming the vocabulary pupils might need beforehand.

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Expressing opinions

I (don’t) like this picture because it’s

.

Expressing emotions

This picture makes me feel because

.

Comparing

These pictures are similar because

.

Contrasting

These pictures are different because

.

Describing a memory

This picture reminds me of

.

Describing a scene

In this picture I can see

.

Giving facts

This picture was painted by (artist)

in year.

This artist was (description).

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