Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Recycled Letter Practice

Old telephone books are one of my "tools" for helping students sit with good foot support or for carrying around the classroom as part of their daily "heavy work" routine, but yesterday I found a new way to use them, or at least part of them.

Active letter practice!  Stand up and reach across the table to create giant letter shapes.  If it gets confusing to think about how to create the huge letters, use the little photo book made up from the wonderful Handwriting Without Tears letter guide  http://www.hwtears.com/hwt

Here are some of the letters two guys and I created during our session:


 Oops--how many horizontal lines are there in the letter "E?"
 That's better.
 Hint--it's a "K."




Yep, a lower case "t."

Tearing the pieces to make skinny letters proved very frustrating for these first graders.  They had to practice keeping their thumbs in close proximity as they tore down the long page.
Some curvy letters were tricky to make, so we tore the phone book pages into smaller pieces and pressed them onto Wikki Stix lettershapes:


These guys loved standing up and walking around the table to create the letters, especially at the end of a long school day.

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