This engaging beginning sounds scarecrow activity will get EVERY student in your class motivated to learn their sounds and letters. I find that my ESL / ELL students enjoy these kinds of hands-on activities. It’s great practice for them. There is one spinner and two recording sheets with this activity, one is a beginning sounds picture matching activity and the other is matching the uppercase and lowercase letters.
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To prepare:
Print as many spinners as you need for each group of students. There is one spinner and two recording sheets. If the students aren’t familiar with spinning games, it’s a good idea to show them how to spin using a paper clip and a pencil. They will get the hang of it fast! Laminate the spinners and then print as many recording sheets as you need for the number of students in your class.
Scarecrow Spin and Color Beginning Sounds
I like having two laminated spinners for each group of 7 or 8 students. ESL students will need more time in general to look and identify the letter before they can begin to look for the matching beginning sound picture (I find this eliminates frustration for all students working on this activity).
The spinner is in color and the recording sheets are in black and white. This should save plenty of ink since the recording sheets will be the ones you will print many copies of. You can start with whichever recording sheet first.
I like getting my ESL students to work on the easier recording sheet first (matching the uppercase letter) to ease them into the ‘spin and color’ game format. So with the uppercase matching recording sheet, students will spin the spinner and identify the lowercase letter. They will then find the matching uppercase letter and color it. They will continue spinning and coloring until all letters are colored. For the beginning sounds recording sheet, they will spin and identify the letter they landed then look for the matching beginning sound picture and color it.
This post was contributed by:
Yara from Sea of Knowledge
Founder of Sea of Knowledge, an ESL teacher with a passion for making learning fun and engaging. She loves creating fun activities that children and learners can benefit from. You can also find me on: Facebook and Pinterest.
For more Fall themed activities, see the following posts:
