097_106_11_90743:BEST

24/2/09

17:08

Pgina 97

Phonics and
Literacy through
Arts and Crafts
Spice up reading and writing activities!

Phonics and teaching English

In the UK, students in lower primary are
systematically taught phonics: how to learn letters
by sounds and sound combinations. When
teaching English as a foreign language, teachers
can use phonics at any level in order to reinforce
the pronunciation of certain words and
students reading skills in general.
Students who are introduced to phonics tend not
to make the typical pronunciation mistakes when
reading that other learners of English make.
Phonics Flashcards

Engage your students in making alphabet

flashcards. On one side they print or paint the
letter 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 an
aeroplane, Australia or an aunty as the
pronunciation of A in the latter is not the same
as the letter sound. Make two copies of each
flashcard and play Noisy Letters.

Noisy Letters*

habet flashcards

alp
1 Hand out
r students. Give the

to you
ts.
same letter to two studen

2 The students read what is on

their card and then give it back

to you.

walk
om
around the ro
eme
repeating the phon
card until
e
th
on
ted
en
repres
with the
n
they find the perso
.
em
th
as
same sound

3 Tell your learners to

saying and

4 When they find the person

they get into pairs and try
to the recall words on the
alphabet flashcard.

*Activity taken from The National Literacy Strategy

Phonics. Progression in Phonics: Materials for whole-class
teaching, Department for Education and Skills, UK, 2000

97

097_106_11_90743:BEST

24/2/09

17:08

Pgina 98

Phoneme Fans*

A phoneme fan is a series of letters printed on

strips of card. They are simple and fun to make.
You can make phoneme fans with your students.
Invent different colours and designs with the
letters you want to use (e.g. n, g, t).

d,

1 Say a word out lou

.
for example sun

2 Write the first 2 letters on the

board and ask the learners
what sound goes at the end.

told you, ask

3 When they haven looks like by

them what an
opriate
holding up the appr
e fan.
em
on
letter on the ph

Activity tip
Here are some suggested words for Phone Fans
Say game:
fun, run, bin, win, log, jog, dog, frog, hot, pot,
not, hit, sit, fit, bat, cat, fat, hat, etc.

*Activity taken from The National Literacy Strategy

Phonics. Progression in Phonics: Materials for whole-class
teaching, Department for Education and Skills, UK, 2000
98

My Sounds Book

To help connect sounds and spelling, make a

sound book with your students. Decide which
words and sounds to start with according to your
own teaching criteria, but take into consideration
that high frequency words are always useful. For
example, the phoneme sound two could include
the following words on the page entry: kangaroo,
boot, shoe, new, blue, drew, through. Always
underline the sound so that learners connect
sound and spelling. Help your learners illustrate
their books by drawing pictures or cutting them
out of magazines.

097_106_11_90743:BEST

24/2/09

17:08

Pgina 99

Phonics and Literacy through Arts and Crafts

Rhyming Words

Improve students pronunciation by teaching them

rhyming words. Technically, a word that rhymes
has exactly the same sound at the end but a
different stem or initial letters. For instance, tree,
sea, monkey and me all rhyme even though the
end spelling is different in each case.

Mini-books

a worksheet

pare
1 First precon
tains text boxes

which
the
of simple sentences from
d.
rea
l
wil
you
ry
sto

2 When students listen to the

story (for the second time),
they put the story in the
correct order by writing a
number in the corner of the
text box.

Suggested activity
The Rhyming Tree
1. Design a tree which has groups of rhyming
words hanging from its branches.
2. Students can then write sentences to include
words from the same branch.
3. A sentence must be grammatically correct,
but not necessarily contextual or make great
sense.
For example: A monkey is in the tree with me
looking at the sea.

the text

3 Then they cut outht em into a

boxes and stick

folded in
booklet. A4 pages
gether are
to
d
ple
half and sta
st.
ple
the sim

4 Students illustrate their mini-

4. Illustrate the sentences with pictures.

Reading and Story Activities

Illustrations

Illustrations are an ideal way of linking Literacy

with Arts and Crafts.
Students can illustrate characters from a story
book and write a summary of their likes and
dislikes, physical descriptions or personalities.
Alternatively, different groups can illustrate a
scene from the text and write a line or two of
accompanying text (depending on their level).
Learners can design alternative cover illustrations
and titles. They could make up a new front cover
for the story book and these can be put together
for a collective display.

book and make a display.

Story Mobiles

Having read a story to your class, students make

a hanging mobile to depict the story.

1
Divide the story
into parts and give
each group a
different section.

2
The learners read
this section again
and design a mobile
accordingly.

4
Finally, pupils tell
their part of the
story to the rest
of the class.

3
The mobile can
contain elements
such as characters,
objects, emotions
and landscapes.

99

097_106_11_90743:BEST

24/2/09

17:09

Pgina 100

Shared writing

Art postcard collections

Shared writing involves the teacher and students

composing a coherent text together. The teacher
writes and provides the structure or support for
learners language and ideas. In this way our
learners can see the process of writing (thinking of
ideas, putting those ideas into sentences and then
constructing a text) modelled for them. Hopefully,
they will absorb the mechanics of this process for
future individual writing tasks.

Art postcards can be found in museums,

bookshops, stationary stores and as greetings
cards. They are a useful teaching resource and
an aesthetic complement to any classroom.
Try to collect a variety of postcards of different
artists, styles and art periods and create a table
display. Allow students to pick them up and study
them in detail. Experiment with some of the
following shared writing activities always
brainstorming the vocabulary pupils might
need beforehand.

Painting self-portraits

It is fun to copy the style of an artist (Picasso,

Van Gogh, Dali) having studied the painter or after
a visit to a museum. Make a wall display of the
portraits and select a simple shared writing
activity to do with them. Provide the following
gap fill (structure).

This is me
I have got

eyes and

I have got a
My face is

hair.

mouth and a

nose.

We are alike
We both have

and

EDELVIVES Photocopiable sheet

Guess who?

100

This person has

He/she has a
Who is it?

eyes and
mouth and a

hair.
nose.

097_106_11_90743:BEST

24/2/09

17:09

Pgina 101

Expressing opinions
I (dont) like this picture because its
.

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
.

This picture was painted by

in
This artist was

(artist)
year.
(description).

EDELVIVES Photocopiable sheet

Giving facts

101