Active Literacy

Composite Class
Strategies and Resources
Working with the whole class

• The whole class can be gathered at the

beginning of the lesson to
– sing the alphabet
– revise sounds
– Identify vowels and
consonants
– Suggest words with
tricky y
Working with the whole class

• All groups listening to all words or sounds being

introduced then differentiated tasks to follow.
• Games where all children
play and older/more able
children support.
Working with different ability groups

• Consider introducing new sounds or spelling words on

different days
• Work with reading groups during soft start or at other
times of the day
• All common words given out
at the beginning of the week
then focused time with teacher
comes later
• Put stages together for
common words if possible
• Generic reading tasks that
can be used with any book
Keeping the others on task
• Individual timers for each pair or large timer on
Smartboard
• Carefully pair children who work well together
and will keep each other on task
• Use of ICT – e.g. Crickweb for spelling
• Task boards
• Literacy boxes
• Using an SLA or
Parent Helper
Using an SLA or Parent Helper
• Monitoring and keeping children on task
• Bag of sounds, matching games etc
• Monitoring reading groups
• Use of activities on task cards. These can be found in
‘Supporting Children with Literacy Difficulties’ book.
• Activities can be initially
introduced/modelled by the
teacher and then supervised
by other adult
• Training available for Support for Learning
Assistants on request
Suggestions from call back sessions
Literacy Boxes
• Contain a variety of tasks
based on the what the group
are learning that week.
– Plasticine cards
– Matching games
– Letter formation practise

• Boxes can be placed on the table and

children choose activities from them.
• This works particularly well with P1
children who may find following task
boards difficult.
Managing spelling groups
Try using 10 minutes at the beginning of the day for partner spelling
work. This could include: Partner dictation
The children work in pairs to
Word reader/maker highlight the sounds in the
The children use cut up story.
letters to make words They use sentences from
where magnetic boards the story for dictation.
are not available.
As an extension the children continue writing the
story, trying to include words with the focus
sound.

Ransom notes
The children cut letters from
newspapers / magazines to
make their spelling words.
 Managing spelling groups
ICT time is used in some schools to practise spelling words.

Children create ‘wordles’ with their

spelling words on the computer using
http://www.wordle.net/

More active spelling ideas and websites can be found on

Active Literacy page
Talk time cards are available from
www.tts-group.co.uk These boards contain a
recording chip that
allows instructions or
sounds to be recorded
by the teacher.

They are an excellent

way of reminding
children of tasks.
Reading resources
Try reading tasks that can be used with any book.

Literacy Circles or Text Detective strategies can be

easily differentiated and need very few resources. More
details of these can be found on the Literacy GLOW
page.

Scholastic resource books

are available from Amazon.
Phonics
Gum ball machines
Can be filled with lettered beads. The
pupils make words with letters or
phonemes from each machine.
One machine may contain
vowels, the other may contain
consonants, blends etc.

Peg letters
These are a great
alternative to magnetic
letters.
Phonics
More great alternatives for word building
activities.