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SPEAKING
READING
EDSP 4306
By Collin Henry
WRITING
THINKING
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Title Page……………………………………………..1
Table of Contents……………………………………..2
Phonetic Activities……………………………………3
 I Spy On the Fly………………………………….4
 Awareness of Syllables..…………………………5
Semantic Activities…………………………………...6
 Dinosaurs ………………………………………...7
 Actions…………………………………………....8
Syntactic Activities……………………………………9
 Story Twister……………………………….……10
 What do you hear?.................................................11
Morphemic Activities………………………………...12
 Animal Idioms…………………………………...13
 Affix Concentration……………………………...14
Pragmatic Activities………………………………….15
 How Would You Feel?..........................................16
 Asking for Help?....................................................17
References…………………………………………….18
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It is knowledge about sound-symbol relations in a
language. The phoneme is the smallest linguistic unit of
sound, in which is combined with other phonemes to form
words.
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Directions: This activity develops a range of phonemic awareness skills, including the ability to
recognize, segment, blend and rhyme sounds. This is an activity that can be played while in the
car, or on the go. The child must recognize an object that has been noticed and find a rhyming
word that goes alone with the object.
1. I spy something that begins/ends with a _____ sound (you provide the beginning or
ending sound of something you see, child finds the item and says the word)
2. I spy something that rhymes with ____ (You provide a word that rhymes with something
you see)
3. I spy something that has a ____ sound in it (You provide a blend sound like /gr/, /br/,
/spl/)
4. I spy something that has three beats (You provide a word that has three syllables)
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Objective: This activity is meant to introduce children to the nature of syllables by leading them
to clap and count the syllables in their own names.
Directions: When first introducing this activity model it by using several names of contrasting
length. Pronounce the names of one of the children in the classroom syllable by syllable while
clapping it out before inviting the children to clap along. Once children seem to understand have
to children become involved in the activity.
Activity:
 The children will begin the activity by recognizing how many syllables are in their
names.
 Children will clap it out to the rest of the class.
 Once the children have learned the number of syllables in their own names children can
use other classmate’s names for further awareness of sounds.
 Children’s syllables awareness can be further added by having children count and clap
out objects those they know with the classroom setting. This helps the children recognize
that there are syllables for every word.
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Semantic Knowledge refers to the word labels that specify
concepts and also to the semantic networks or schemata,
that represent the interrelations between concepts.
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Objective: Rhymes come to life during circle and large group times as preschool children show
word meaning through simple actions and finger movements. Preschoolers develop memory and
recall skills as they sing and recite the songs and poems.
Directions: Students will interact with the poem through using puppets and hands on interaction.
Interaction is important for students at the preschool level. Students will be able to make a
connection between the words of the rhyme and what they previously know.
Dinosaurs
Five enormous dinosaurs
Letting out a roar-One went away, and
Then there were four.
Four enormous dinosaurs
Crashing down a tree-One went away, and
Then there were three.
Three enormous dinosaurs
Eating tiger stew-One went away, and
Then there were two.
Two enormous dinosaurs
Trying to run-One ran away, and then there was one.
One enormous dinosaur,
Afraid to be a hero-He went away, and
Then there was zero.
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Objective: Students vocabulary building is important. Vocabulary can be included in numerous
activities. It helps students when providing a visual image of the word and having to retrieve it at
a later moment.
Receptive Directions: Show me _____ (fill in action). Use your marker to fill in the dot below
the picture to find it.
Expressive Directions: tell me what is happening in the picture. Use your marker to check the
picture then move to the next one.
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Syntactic development is children's internalization of the rules of
language that govern how words are organized into sentences. There are three
key building blocks of syntactic development. The first is an increase in
utterance length, typically estimated by calculating the mean length of
utterance (MLU) in morphemes. As children's MLU increases, the internal
syntactic of sentences increases to include use of articles, conjunctions, and
verbs. The second building block is emergence of sentence modalities. During
early and later childhood, children use a range of sentence types. The third
building block is development of complex syntax, in which children begin to
use a variety of phrase types and coordinate clausal structure to produce
complex and compound sentences.
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Objective: It is important for students to take part in creating sentences on their
own. Sentence structure is something that requires practice and higher level
thinking for young children. It is important that a teacher provide numerous
opportunities for student practice involving sentence structure.
Directions: Students will be provided with three pictures below. The pictures
below will show some type of action. The students will be required to write a
sentence for each picture. There should be a noun, and a verb and an adjective
describing the picture.
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Objective: Syntax activities focus on helping children to understand and use correct sentence
construction and grammar. Syntax activities focus on helping children learn to formulate and
appreciate complete and complex sentences. Providing numerous hands on opportunities helps
students become creative in sentence structure and using critical thinking.
Directions:
Invite the class to sit outside in a circle on the grass. Ask them to close their eyes and listen.
Remain silent. After a few seconds, ask students what they heard. The activity may need to be
repeated several times for children to become comfortable with the activity.
Initially, ask students to tell you what they heard in complete sentences.
Example: "I heard a bird." "I hear a dog barking."
Later, ask students to describe what they heard in more complex syntax ("First I heard a bird,
then I heard a dog barking, and the whole time, I could hear the wind blowing.").
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Morphological development describes internalization of the rules of language that govern
the structure of words. Key building blocks include acquiring grammatical and
derivational morphology. Grammatical morphemes are used to inflect words for
grammatical purposes; these include use of past, future, and present tense markings of
verbs and plural and possessive markings of nouns. Derivational morphemes are used to
modify root words to change their meaning or class. Children acquire a range of
grammatical and derivational morphemes during early and later childhood; this
substantially increases their vocabulary size from a relatively small corpus of root words to
a much larger base of derivationally related and grammatically inflected words.
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Objective: Tell students that an idiom is an expression that cannot be fully understood by the
meanings of the individual words that are contained within it. The meaning of the whole idiom
has little, often nothing, to do with the meanings of the words taken one by one. Point out to
students that idioms are often used in writing or speech to make expression more colorful and
that some of the most colorful English idioms make use of animals or animal comparisons.
Directions: Tell students that they are going to work together in groups to make a drawing of an
animal idiom's literal meaning and then act out its real, or figurative, meaning. They will see if
the drawings and skits they make provide enough information for their classmates to figure out
what the idiom really means. To begin, select a group of three students to demonstrate the
activity. Tell this group that their idiom is "to let the cat out of the bag" and that this idiom
means "to give away a secret."
Divide the group tasks as follows: One student will draw the idiom the way it would look if it
meant literally what it said: by drawing a sketch of a cat leaping out of a paper bag. This student
labels the drawing with the idiom, "to let the cat out of the bag." The other two students develop
a brief skit about the figurative meaning of the idiom: "to give away a secret." For example, they
could develop a simple scene where someone finds out about a surprise birthday party, because a
brother or sister gives it away beforehand. The last line could be: "You let the cat out of the bag."
When the group is finished, have them show the idiom's literal meaning in the drawing, and then
act out its figurative meaning in the skit. Have the group challenge their classmates to guess the
idiom's figurative, or intended, meaning and then correctly use the idiom in a sentence: Nancy let
the cat out of the bag when she told Nick about the surprise birthday party. When the whole class
has understood how this activity works, assign a different animal idiom, with its figurative
meaning, to other groups of students. Each group then works out its plan for making the drawing
and acting out the skit. Have the groups take turns demonstrating their idioms to the class, so the
class can guess the idiom's figurative meaning and use it in a sentence.
Animal Idioms:
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to have ants in your pants
to take the bull by the horns
to let the cat out of the bag
to have the cat get your tongue
to be raining cats and dogs
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Objective: The students will identify the meaning of affixes.
Activity:
 Students will match affixes to their meanings by playing a memory game
Directions:
 Place the affix and meaning cards face down in rows on a flat surface.
 Taking turns, students select two cards and read them.
 Determine if the cards match by showing an affix and its meaning (pre, before). If there is
a match, pick up cards and place to the side. If cards do not match, return them to the
original position.
 Continue until all matches are found
UN
Not, Opposite of
RE
Again
Pre
Before
Mis
Wrongly
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Pragmatic language development is the development
of the ability to use context to construct the meaning
the speaker meant to communicate. In social situations
we often rely on context to figure out what the speaker
meant
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Objective: The objective of this activity is for students to use stories, books and pictures to
discuss the potential feelings, thoughts and actions of people involved.
Directions: Students will be provided a picture of a situation or event. The students will be
asked several questions about the event. Students will answer the questions and the teacher will
check for pragmatic clarification.
So:
How would you feel?
What is he thinking?
What would you do?
What would you say?
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Objective: The goal of this is for students to understand the proper way of asking for help in a
social setting.
Directions: Students will be presented with a story below. The story discusses how to ask for
help. Students will be asked questions at the end of the story.
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Ask for Help
Look around to see what other students are doing. Try to figure out what is supposed to
happen next
If that didn’t help, raise your hand and look towards the teacher.
Think of the question you need to ask in your head. Practice it in your head
When the teacher comes over, show her the place on your paper you are stuck and then
ask the question you have in mind
Watch the teachers face as she talks and what she writes on your paper
If the answer doesn’t make sense, ask for more help.
When she is done look at the teacher and say “Thank You”.
What did the student do to get the teacher to help?
What did the student do before asking the question?
What should you do if you are confused about a teachers response?
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