Lucy Chambers is a primary school teacher and Co-Founder of education startup, Cleverbean, providing easy lesson planning tools to teachers right around Australia.
Prep yourself with some K-6 showstoppers that will keep students engaged and learning. Whether you are casual teaching for the day, need a lesson on the fly or are a classroom teacher, here are 8 fun and fab literacy activities that have been tried and tested. Watch as students shine and lap up the creativity of them. Stock your bags with Post-it notes and picture books! Here we go:
1. Main character setting
Before reading a new book, take a copy of the main character from a story and give it to the students. Tell them this is a character that they will be meeting in a story today. Ask students to draw a picture of where they think the character lives, and/or the main setting. Ask them to use clues from the image that you show them. Eg. a dragon might live in a forest or cave where as a princess might live in a castle. It is wonderful to see their faces when they finally get to meet the character in the story. For more lesson details and differentiation, see the full lesson plan.
2. Pay Attention To Punctuation
Give this lesson a whirl for lots of LOLs in the classroom. This brilliant lesson uses the combination of numbers and punctuation to develop students’ confidence in expression and use of punctuation markers. No decoding, a lesson for all learners. For more lesson details and differentiation, see the full lesson plan.
3. Post-it Retell
Tell students that you will be focusing on retelling a story with them, telling the most important parts from beginning to end. Read a story and stop after a few pages or after the initial orientation. Ask students to draw a picture on a Post-it note that represents the main thing that happened at the beginning of the story. Continue reading the book and ask students to create an image for the middle and the end. Students can then use their Post-it notes to do a paired verbal retell. For more lesson details and differentiation, see the full lesson plan.
4. Build The Retell
This is a fabulous activity that captures the student’s ability to summarise, order and understand the main idea of a story. Read a book and in small groups get students to recreate the main parts using Lego or Duplo. Alternatively, get students to create a treasure map of the story. The treasure should be something important to the story. Maybe a main message or an item that is considered valuable. For more lesson details and differentiation, see the full lesson plan.
5. Prediction Mission
Before reading a new text to students, read the title and look at the front cover. Discuss what they think the book might be about. On a whiteboard or Post-it note, ask students to write down a word that they might meet in the story. After students predictions, read the book as a class and then discuss which words they met, which words were surprising. Using the gathered words that were in the story, students can write a descriptive sentence to describe the book. For more lesson details and differentiation, see the full lesson plan.
6. Key word predictions
Give students 10 key words from a story. Tell students that the 10 words are from a book that they will read today and using the words they need to write a story beginning or a prediction using the key words. The key words on Post-it notes works well and students working pairs or small groups. For more lesson details and differentiation, see the full lesson plan.
7. Six Word Story Summary
Read a book and challenge students to play with words by asking them to respond by creating a six word story to summarise the book. Students will need to pull out the most important words from the book and organsie them so they make sense and tell a story. Post-it notes work well for this activity so words can be easily manipulated. For more lesson details and differentiation, see the full lesson plan.
8. Book Spine Haiku
Introduce the concept of syllables and haiku poetry and how to work out how many syllables are in a word. Discuss how syllables are used to create Haiku poems- 3 lines (5 syllables, 7 syllables, 5 syllables). Tell students that they are going to use book titles to create their own Haiku poems. Students grouped in pairs works helps the lesson move along. For more lesson details and differentiation, see the full lesson plan.
