Resources can be a great way to engage and excite learners with their literacy. From illumi boards for writing, to mini phonics mats to consolidate phonics learning, there are so many resources that can help to support and motivate learners with their reading, writing, and speaking and listening
Here are seven of our favourite resources that will help to invigorate your literacy lessons …
1. Mini Phonics Mats
These bright and colourful mats allow for engaging, fun phonics learning. With different colours representing different phases, they create the perfect multi-sensory tool for children to engage with phonics during classroom provision.
A great addition to any phonics resources, the mats are ideal for use in water, sand, on the floor or outside.
Activity Idea – Phonic Fishing
- Put a selection of phonic mats in your water tray. Why not add some sea creatures too?
- Using a net, children then go fishing for a mat.
- When they have caught one, the child must say the sound out loud.
- You could increase the challenge by asking children to fish for multiple mats and then build a word with the ones they catch. Is it a real word or not?
For more activity ideas, download our FREE activity guide.
2. Outdoor Sound Stars
As well as being ideal for creating outdoor displays, these sound stars are the perfect addition to your literacy lesson resources. Plan exciting activities to help children consolidate their learning from phonics lessons in a fun, engaging way.
Activity Idea – Physical Phonics
These activities are ideal for getting children moving while recapping their sounds.
Hang the stars on an outside wall or fence and then have a go at some of these:
- Find the sound and tap it. Can you find all the sounds to make a word?
- Throw/ bounce a bean bag or ball at the stars, which star did you hit? What letter is it? What sound is it?
- Throw a ball three or four times. What stars did you hit? What word does this spell?
For more activity ideas, download our FREE activity guide.
3. Super Sentence Tubs
Get to grips with grammar and sentence structure using the foam pieces from the Super Sentence Tub Sets.
The Super Sentence Tubs are the perfect resource to explore aspects of grammar and sentence construction whilst also providing the opportunity for children to apply their reading skills. The foam pieces are all colour coded according to word type, helping children to learn about different word classes too.
Activity Idea – Sort the Sentence
This activity will help children to practise their reading and grammar skills.
- Before the lesson, create a range of sentences using the foam pieces and then rearrange the words in each sentence, e.g. red – was – big – hammer – . – The
- Explain to the children that something has happened and your sentences have become jumbled, maybe a class puppet has been up to mischief! You need their help to sort it.
- Children have to read the words in the sentence and then rearrange the pieces so that the sentence make sense.
For more activity ideas, download our FREE activity guide.
4. 44 Sound and Spelling Tubs
There are 44 sounds that make up every spoken word in the English language. Each tub has items representing a particular sound. With the help of the objects included in these tubs, children will be able to see how a variety of different spelling patterns are used to represent each of these different sounds. Ideal for using in whole class, group or individual learning activities.
Activity Idea – Odd One Out
Perfect for practice and reinforcement of sounds already learnt.
Place all of the sound items from one tub onto a tray, include an item from another tub that doesn’t fit. Ask children to identify the odd one out and explain why.
For more activity ideas, download our FREE activity guide.
5. Reading Comprehension Bookmarks
Make every time a child reads an opportunity to develop comprehension.
Whether children are reading at school or at home, these question bookmarks ensure that any adult can ask meaningful questions to develop this essential reading skill.
These bookmarks can be easily kept inside children’s books and offer ready to use prompts to help when talking about reading.
6. Clever Tiles
These small recordable tiles can be used to record, sequence and playback your own sounds, words or sentences.
Record up to 10 seconds on each tile and then click them together and press play to hear all recordings played back in sequence. They can also be played individually.
With so many activity possibilities, they could be used to help children recognise sounds in words, experiment with different sentence structures or to sequence story events.
Ideal for phonics …
- Record a phoneme on each tile and write the grapheme on the top with a dry wipe pen. Children choose a selection of tiles and click them together to build a word. Before pressing play, children must try to sound out the word themselves and then hit play to check.
Ideal for exploring sentence structure …
- Choose a sentence you want to explore. Record each word on a separate tile and write the word on top. Children can then move the tiles to experiment with different word order and then hit play to listen to the effect it has on the sentence.
7. Creative Writing Tubs
Ideal for stimulating creative talk before writing and sparking story ideas, these robust tubs contain a selection of engaging miniature objects and characters that can inspire fiction or non-fiction writing.
Activity Idea – Story Circle
A perfect small group activity to stimulate creative talk before writing.
- Sit in a circle with one of the writing tubs.
- Start your story with one person choosing an object from the tub and saying aloud a sentence, e.g. ‘A shiny spaceship zoomed through the sky into space’.
- Pass the box to the next person to continue the story by choosing another object and creating a sentence, e.g. ‘A huge alien saw the spaceship whizzing past’.
- Continue round the group developing your story as you go.
