Literacy Activities: Reading, Writing, and Speaking for Grade 1

This document presents a series of literacy activities designed for first-grade students, encompassing reading, writing, and speaking skills. The reading activities include a word squares alignment exercise to build sentence construction and a phonics wheel to reinforce phonetic awareness. Writing activities involve a letter correction task to improve language skills and a picture-to-text translation exercise to connect visual and written communication. A speaking activity focuses on an etiquette game, encouraging conversational skills and compliment giving. The document also includes adaptations for special needs children, addressing IEP/504 plans, with modifications for each activity to cater to individual learning needs, ensuring a comprehensive approach to literacy development in a diverse classroom setting. The activities are designed to be adaptable and engaging, promoting critical thinking and cross-disciplinary knowledge.

Running head: LITERACY BEYOND THE CLASSROOM
LITERACY BEYOND THE CLASSROOM
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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Reading activity 1
Title – Word squares alignment
Description – In this activity, you will need words printed/written on squares pieces of cardboard. Initially, make a few target sentences
that you want the children to accomplish according to ELA standards (NRC, 2014). The target sentences can include the following as an
example.
 I went to school yesterday
 I will (not) go to school today
 I will go to school tomorrow.
Spread the words on the ground / table, in front of the child. Ask the child to pick up a random square and read the word written on the
square. The child must be able to read words like ‘go’,’ went’ or ‘school’. Afterwards, ask the child to make a sentence out of the words.
Start by asking “Do you want to go to school tomorrow? Tell me by using the squares to make a sentence”. Give the child an example,
by making the sentence ‘I went to school yesterday’ by aligning the proper squares together, then asking the child to read the sentence.
Then scramble the squares and ask the child to answer your question by re aligning the word squares to fit the question.
Skills – Critical thinking, problem solving

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Reading activity 2
Title – Phonics wheel
Description – take a circular paper or a white paper plate, divide it into segments by drawing diameters on the circle. Fill up every
segment by a particular word segment that is used in words in speech appropriate for grade 1. Some sounds like that include – ow, ay, o,
ou, oi, aw, ea, etc. Fix the circle on a cardboard using a pin at the centre and draw an arrow pointing at any random segment on the
cardboard. When the wheel rotates and stops, the arrow will point at a particular segment.
Provide the child with a list of words where the segments are included. Make sure that the words are written in big bold fonts. Ask the
child to rotate the wheel himself/herself or rotate the wheel for the child. When the wheel stops, ask the child to look at the words and
find out which words have the segment in them. The child must be able to read the list and find out instances of words like ‘ OIL’,
‘OWL’ etc. Provide a few examples at the beginning.
Skills – Critical thinking, Problem solving.

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Writing activity 1
Title – Letter correction task.
Description – Write a letter in a language that is suitable for grade 1 children. Make intentional mistakes in the letter in punctuation,
capitalization, spelling and numbers. Highlight each mistake with a yellow highlighter.
Give the letter to the child and tell the child that this letter has some wrong words that need to be corrected. The child should be able to
read the letter and identify the mistakes. Some common mistake corrections can be:
Replacing lower case ‘i’ with upper case ‘I’.
Replacing faulty tense – changing ‘go’ to ‘went’ in ‘I go to school yesterday’.
Provide upper case beginning for names used in the letter.
Skills – Critical thinking, cross disciplinary knowledge.

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Writing activity 2
Title – picture to text translation
Description – In this task, provide the child with a series of pictures that depicts a simple activity.
Ask the child to identify the objects in the picture, followed by the action that is happening.
E.g. Provide the child with a picture of a boy flying a kite. The child should be able to identify the objects as boy and kite, followed by
the action as flying.
Afterwards, ask the child to write them down on a white boards or a textbook. Once the child has written the keywords, ask the child to
describe the scenario in one full sentence using the keywords. The child should be able to write – “The boy is flying a kite”.
Provide scaffolding where required, especially at the beginning.
Skills – Critical thinking.
Speaking activity
Title – The etiquette game.
Description – In this activity, the child will learn about giving compliments to other people while engaging and developing their
speaking skills. It is a conversational game where you will have to involve with the child.in a scenario first in order to provide the
context.
First, ask the child to complete a simple task like folding a letter and putting it into an envelope. Once the child does that, congratulate
the child and provide compliments by using keywords like, very good, nice job, remarkable etc. make sure the speech is not more than
three sentences.
e.g. “Very good (child’s name). You did a really good job there. You are remarkable in folding letters and putting it in the envelope”
Afterwards, ask the child to provide a return compliment using similar words. Ask the child to make sure s/he does not repeat any word
more than twice.
This activity can also be modified to develop spoken skills in other areas, like asking for permission, saying apologies and requesting for
something.
Skills – Cross disciplinary knowledge, problem solving.

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Adaptations for special needs children. (IEP/504)
Based on special needs of the children identified under the IEP or 504 plans, each activity for writing, reading or speaking can have
special adaptations.
 The first reading task can be adapted by using alphabets instead of words and asking to form words instead of complete
sentences.
 The second reading task can be adapted to include the first alphabet of each letter in a segment instead of within word parts. The
child should then be able to identify words from the list based on the first alphabet of the word.
 The writing task can be adapted to make it more focused towards either word construction or sentence construction based on the
specific deficit of the child. Instead of providing the child with a full text, provide them with words with spelling errors and two
to three correct alternatives. The child should be able to identify the correct alternative from the response.
 The spoken task should be made more engaging for the children. Firstly, establish thorough conversation with the child on a
daily basis to ensure communication is steady. Then focus on developing specific words by using them more commonly.

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Adaptations for above grade level.
For children above grade level, the tasks can be adapted in the following ways:
 The reading tasks can be made slightly more complex where instead of using the squares for words, write jumbled sentences on a
board and ask the child to form a complete coherent sentence. The rationale is that slightly advanced children will have less
problems identifying and interpreting written data.
 The writing task can be adapted where instead of highlighting the mistakes, leave them in the letter and ask the children to
identify and correct the mistakes themselves. Similarly, the picture to text task can be made more complex by adding more
elements and making the resulting sentence more complex.
 The speaking task can be adapted in a way where the child will provide a compliment or ask a permission without any prior
context. They must be able to identify a scenario and construct the necessary sentence based on that.
Explanation of activities
Literacy, language and communication skills are extremely crucial elements of early childhood development (Pellatti et al.,
2014). Early childhood is considered a significant period, age wise, when the children’s cognitive and behavioural development are at
their heightened activation (Parkay, Anctil & Hass, 2014). It is this stage where children are able to take in the most amount of
information and replicate them accordingly.
The ELA standards (NRC, 2014) outline specific goals and targets in early development of language and literacy skills that are
appropriate for grade 1 children. They include identification of simple mistakes and correct tenses in a sentence, basic parts of speech
being used properly, punctuation and cases are well identified and verbs are appropriate of their tenses. Based on those highlights, the
above activities are developed to aid he children in their reading, writing and spoken skills respectively. It should also be noted that these
activities are to be done at home. This is important because at this stage of growth and development, children are more prone to taking in
significant bits of information as long as they are constantly present. Home learning is a fruitful experience for them (Skwarchuk,
Sowinski & LeFevre, 2014).

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While coming to IEP and 504 plans, it must be remembered that the activities require much more scaffolding on the parents’ part
in order to fit the requirements (Bottsford-Miller et al., 2006). Children with special needs can be identified to have a diverse variety of
needs. Some might require scaffolding with speech, while others might require help understanding alphabets. Each of these activities are
therefore designed in a way that they are simple enough for the non IEP/504 children to develop, as well as flexible enough for children
with special needs to be able to have a stable cognitive development.
Coming to children above grade level, these children are usually identified to be slightly more developed, in other words known
as ‘gifted children’ (Kroesbergen et al., 2016). They require less scaffolding and are able to understand and produce activities faster and
better. Therefore these activities described here, can also be modified to be more inclusive of complicated structural modifications and
adaptations in order to challenge the gifted children and identify their potentials and skills.
Summary of presentation.
 Literacy, language and communication are key aspects of development in early childhood.
 Home learning plays a significant role in aiding the process of development of these key skills.
 Home learning for grade 1 children can include a variety of activities for the development of reading, writing and speaking skills.
 These activities must be well designed enough to enable to grade appropriate children to develop as well as flexible enough to be
modified according to the needs of children under IEP and 504 criteria.
 Children with special needs require much more scaffolding.
 Children with gifted abilities can perform more complex and challenging tasks.

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References
Bottsford-Miller, N., Thurlow, M. L., Stout, K. E., & Quenemoen, R. F. (2006). A Comparison of IEP/504 Accommodations Under
Classroom and Standardized Testing Conditions: A Preliminary Report on SEELS Data. Synthesis Report 63. National Center
on Educational Outcomes, University of Minnesota.
Kroesbergen, E. H., van Hooijdonk, M., Van Viersen, S., Middel-Lalleman, M. M., & Reijnders, J. J. (2016). The psychological well-
being of early identified gifted children. Gifted Child Quarterly, 60(1), 16-30.
National Research Council. (2014). Literacy for science: Exploring the intersection of the Next Generation Science Standards and
Common Core for ELA Standards: A workshop summary. National Academies Press.
Parkay, F. W., Anctil, E. J., & Hass, G. (2014). Curriculum leadership: Readings for developing quality educational programs. Prentice
Hall.
Pelatti, C. Y., Piasta, S. B., Justice, L. M., & O’Connell, A. (2014). Language-and literacy-learning opportunities in early childhood
classrooms: Children's typical experiences and within-classroom variability. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 29(4), 445-
456.
Skwarchuk, S. L., Sowinski, C., & LeFevre, J. A. (2014). Formal and informal home learning activities in relation to children’s early
numeracy and literacy skills: The development of a home numeracy model. Journal of experimental child psychology, 121, 63-
84.