Station Teaching - Senior Infants
These are examples of some of the stations I've used in the last few years with Senior Infants .
Threading Letters
This I used as an independent station. I print off a variety of sight words that the children know/ are learning and put them in a box (so we never have the excuse of "I don't know what word to make!") and the children thread the letters onto the laces to make words. These threading letters are available from Michael Doherty School Supplies.
Silly Sentences
This is a purchase from the TeachersPayTeachers store. It is made by First Grade Fun Times. The way this resource works is there are sets of flashcards in six different colours. Each child in the group picks a flashcard of each colour and lays them out on the table in a set order: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple. The sentence will be grammatically correct but will usually be utterly ridiculous in meaning and the children think it's absolutely hilarious! It also allows for a little incidental work on punctuation as the purple flashcard can be a full stop, question mark or an exclamation mark so we have a chat about the way the sentence is said. I usually use this as a reading activity, though it can very easily become reading and writing by getting them to write out the silly sentences they have made.
Magnetic Station
This resource was made by Karen Jones on teacherpayteachers.com. Senior Infants need so much practise with CVC words but I wanted to find a way of them working with CVC words without necessarily having to write them out so I was delighted when I found this! I headed off to trawl the pound shops to find the cheapest baking trays I could find and spent a few hours printing and laminating. I decided to print and laminate and magnetic tape the letters of the alphabet too which added to the workload considerably but it meant that the letters were in the pre-cursive font that the children are used to and also it meant I didn't have to go and spend a lot of money on buying multiple sets of magnetic letters. The lovely box they live in was something I had myself that I used to store crafting materials in but I'm sure you'd pick up a box in one of the pound shops with enough sections etc for the letters! I often use it early in the year and focus on CVC words and word families and then bring it out again later in the year when they have more covered in Jolly Phonics and can use it to practise and consolidate vowel blends and alternative sounds as they appear in Jolly Phonics. If there is an adult available to work at this station, it probably is best, but I do use it as an independent station when I need to/ if the children are able to.
iPad Station
Writing Wizard
Hands down the best handwriting app you can buy! Print, Pre-cursive, Cursive, numbers, shapes, you name it, it has them all! |
Amazing for Phonics. You can set it so the children can access any level or they can start from basic CVC and work their way up. When they have completed Jolly Phonics 2, they have covered most of the sounds they need to play this game! Letting them access any level means the more able children can challenge themselves by attempting levels 9/10/11 which they love!
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This is both an app and can also be played online. Playing online on the computer is completely free, you do have to pay for the app. It starts from the beginning, covering initial sounds, blends before moving onto trickier blends and words. An excellent resource! Always worth keeping an eye on their social media, they tend to reduce the app/ give it away for free a few times a year!
Worksheet Station
I got these worksheets on teacherspayteachers and they are made by Karen Devereaux. The two resources I bought are Sight Word Sense and Sight Word Seize.
I made a little bundle out of them which the children work through independently. I will say at this stage this did require a bit of teaching and explaining how to fill them in before they started filling them in independently. Once they were up and running, each child was able to work at their own speed and level through the worksheets. Some of the more able children flew through them and were brilliant at making up their own sentences while others worked at a slower pace and I didn't push them to do the more challenging activities. Generally though, they all managed well and I did feel it was worthwhile.
There's no doubt this is a challenge for them and there are some classes I wouldn't dream of using them with, but if the children are able they can get a lot out of them, They are practising so many skills - identifying and examining the target sight words, finding rhyming words, identifying the vowels, the letters and writing a sentence of their own. There's a huge element of comprehension involved in both the filling in the blanks and also in reading the three sentences and deciding which is the correct sentence. I also really like that every page is laid out in pretty much exactly the same way. They know what is expected of them because it is exactly what was expected of them on the previous page!
I made a little bundle out of them which the children work through independently. I will say at this stage this did require a bit of teaching and explaining how to fill them in before they started filling them in independently. Once they were up and running, each child was able to work at their own speed and level through the worksheets. Some of the more able children flew through them and were brilliant at making up their own sentences while others worked at a slower pace and I didn't push them to do the more challenging activities. Generally though, they all managed well and I did feel it was worthwhile.
There's no doubt this is a challenge for them and there are some classes I wouldn't dream of using them with, but if the children are able they can get a lot out of them, They are practising so many skills - identifying and examining the target sight words, finding rhyming words, identifying the vowels, the letters and writing a sentence of their own. There's a huge element of comprehension involved in both the filling in the blanks and also in reading the three sentences and deciding which is the correct sentence. I also really like that every page is laid out in pretty much exactly the same way. They know what is expected of them because it is exactly what was expected of them on the previous page!
Onset & Rime
You get a set of flashcards with onset and rimes and the children put them together and read them. Now depending on your class, it might be enough to just read them, or you could get them to write down the word they have made, or as you can see in the image above, they read the word and decide whether it is a real or a nonsense word and write it in the appropriate column. You have two options when printing this resource you can print them in colour, as you can see above or they also come in black and white so I printed the onsets onto one colour card and the rimes onto another because it makes tidying up much quicker! It is made by Education to the Core and is available on TeachersPayTeachers. Tip for you if you decide to buy it - split each of those columns into two as they will have way more nonsense words than real words! I use this as an independent station.