Word boundaries
From FreeReading
| Activity Type: Introduce |
| Activity Form: Standard |
| Grade: K, 1 (can be adapted for older students) |
| Group Size: Small Group |
| Length: 5-8 minutes |
| Materials: A Fun Day; Photocopies in two sizes of the first sentence in A Fun Day: enlarged and original; Scissors |
| Goal: Students can demonstrate awareness that printed words on a page correspond to spoke words, are separated by spaces, and have word boundaries. |
| Items: A Fun Day |
What to do
- Open A Fun Day to page 1. Point to the corresponding places on the page as you ask the following questions to review the previous lesson: Where do we begin reading a page? (At the top) Can someone show us how we read words on a page? Use your finger to show us. Give several students an opportunity to show reading from left to right. Now, let’s look at the letters and words on this page.
- Use your hands or a piece of paper to frame the M in My at the top of page 1. This is the letter M. Repeat with the letter y. Then reveal the entire word. When letters are written close together like this, they spell a word. The letters M and y spell the word My.
- Point to the spaces between the words on page 1. We leave spaces between words when we write. Spaces help us know when one word ends and another word begins. Let’s count the words on this page. Point to each word as you count together. There are four words. They are easy to count because there are spaces between them.
- Without leaving any spaces between the words, write My name is Mia on the board. There are no spaces between these words. It’s hard to know when one word ends and another word begins. The words are hard to count.
- Read page 1 in A Fun Day once more. Instruct students to count the words in My name is Mia with you.
- Distribute the enlarged copies of the first sentence from A Fun Day. Now it’s your turn. Clap for each word as I read it aloud.
- Read the sentence aloud. How many words are in this sentence? (Four) What comes after each word? (A space) Now, very carefully, cut your sentence into words. Cut in the space between each word. Ask students to count the cut words again.