In our SEN setting (an autism unit) we are constantly looking for inventive ways of helping pupils to learn and consolidate a basic sight vocabulary in order to allow them to access reading material.
We came across an online idea of using books designed for small babies for literacy activities in a school setting and we developed the idea a little further. You need to purchase books in which the pages are made from durable card as you’re going to be attaching Velcro for pupils to attach and pull off words and sentences.
You simply attach a strip of Velcro somewhere on each page of the book. You then print out, laminate and attach Velcro to the rear of some simple words, phrases or sentences.We started with simple word to word matching activities. Once this was mastered, we extended the activity to include sentences with high frequency vocabulary eg:
- Look at the …….
- I can see the …..
- Here is a …..
- This is a ….
This was a high interest activity for some of our pupils and once the activity is mastered, it could become an independent activity. These literacy activities could also be used during Station Teaching in infant classrooms with pairs or small groups working on these activities.
We created these type of activities for books we purchased on colours (as in the above photo), first words (as is featured in the video below), animals and fruit & vegetables books. These activities can be easily created for whatever durable infant book you can find.
This video shows three different ways of using the same book for a literacy activity.
