- Building a House (book)
- chart paper
- marker
MA Standards:
English Language Arts/Foundational Skills/RF.PK.MA.2.b With guidance and support, segment words in a simple sentence by clapping and naming the number of words in the sentence
Head Start Outcomes:
Literacy Knowledge/Phonological Awareness Identifies and discriminates between words in language.
PreK Learning Guidelines:
English Language Arts/Language 4 Engage in play experiences that involve naming and sorting common words into various classifications using general and specific language.
English Language Arts/Reading and Literature 8 Listen to, identify, and manipulate language sounds to develop auditory discrimination and phonemic awareness.
Word Play: Segment Sentences #3
© Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Department of Early Education and Care (Jennifer Waddell photographer). All rights reserved.
ELA Focus Skills: Math (Counting, Ordinal Numbers), Phonological Awareness (Clapping, Segmenting), Word Recognition
Help children practice segmenting words in a sentence. On chart paper, write the following sentence from Building a House: “Builders hammer and saw.”
- Say, Listen carefully as I read this sentence from the book we read today. “Builders hammer and saw.” (Track the words as you say them.)
- Remind children that a sentence is made up of words. Ask, How many words are in this sentence? Listen, I will read it again and clap each word. Say each word slowly and clap.
- Ask, How many times did I clap? Yes, four times. There are four words in the sentence. Say the sentence with me and clap the words. Repeat the sentence, tapping on each word as children clap: “Builders . . . hammer . . . and . . . saw.”
- Have children listen and look as you read another sentence: “They put up walls.” Read it again and say, Point to the word they. Point to the word put. Point to the word up. Point to the word walls.
Write these other sentences from the book and have children help to read them aloud, count the number of words, and identify various words within each sentence.
- “Carpenters come and make a wooden floor.”
- “They put up walls.”
- “Carpenters put in windows and doors.”
- “Painters paint inside and out.”
- “The house is built.”
Adaptation: In groups with varying ages, challenge older children. Write the words to the sentence “The family moves inside” on small word strips. Insert them in a sentence chart, reading them aloud as you do. Have a duplicate set of word cards in a line on a table, out of order. Read the words aloud. Guide children to understand that the words do not make sense out of order. Ask children to put the words in the correct order to match the original sentence. Then read it together and talk about how it now makes sense.