Gill Budgell
Note to parents/carers and practitioners 3
Unit 1: Distinguishing sounds and early mark-making 4–14
Unit 2: Improving phonological awareness and mark-making 15–24
Unit 3: Moving towards formal reading and writing 25–36
This Learner’s Book provides activities to support Step 1 of Cambridge Phonics and Handwriting. At this stage, the emphasis is on developing awareness of spoken sounds (phonological awareness) rather than the formal skill of reading.
Activities can be completed at school or at home. Children will need support from an adult. Additional guidance is given at the bottom of each activity page in the ‘For practitioners’ boxes.
Children will meet the characters below in this book. Ask children to point to the characters when they see them on the pages and say their names!
Find us on the front covers doing lots of fun activities.
Together, find and say the labels in the picture (board, window, shelf, table and chair). Point to the words and run your finger under them as you say them. Children point to the object that the word relates to. Turn to the sticker pages and encourage children to select the correct stickers to complete the picture: a window and a chair. Children say the word as they add each sticker, so they’re relating the word to the object.
Point to the pictures and talk about the long-legged giraffe, the one-armed robot, the curly caterpillar and the zig-zag monster. Point out and describe the letter shape hidden within each picture. Show children manipulatives of letters (magnetic letters, letters printed or written on paper, etc.) and talk about their shapes. Children then match each family character on the left-hand side of the page to the corresponding letter on the right-hand side either by drawing lines or finger tracing. Children finger trace over the letters on the right-hand side while repeating the letter family character.
Ask children to finger trace each of the patterns (circles, curves, loops, and waves). Encourage them to start, stop and do it again, perhaps exploring different directions. Children trace with a pencil and then use a separate piece of paper to make their own versions of the patterns, copying from this page.
Point to each picture in turn, saying the word for each picture, and clapping the syllables: bread (1), butt-er (2), pie (1), hon-ey (2), jam (1), man-go (2), milk (1), bun (1), cheese (1). Encourage the children to join in. Repeat, this time selecting pictures at random, for children to respond by saying the words and clapping the syllables.