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Introduction
Developing Literacy: Sentence Activities supports the teaching of reading and writing by providing a series of activities to
develop children’s understanding of the way in which the structure of sentences conveys meaning. The activities help the
children to understand that a sentence can be grammatically correct even if its meaning is nonsense, for example, ‘The cat sat
on the mat’ and ‘The mat sat on the cat’ are both grammatically correct, but the latter does not make sense because mats do
not sit. The activities help to show the children the importance of the order of words in a sentence, and to examine the effect
of changing it.
The children also learn to examine the ef

fect of their choice of words and to question whether it communicates what they
intend. They find out how their choices affect the listener or reader.
The activities are designed to be carried out independently and therefore sh

ould be relatively ‘teacher-free’; an adult will
need to read some of the instructions with the children in the youngest age-groups, but many of the activity sheets have
similar formats and instructions with which the children will soon become familiar.
The activities presented in Developing Liter

acy: Sentence Activities support learning objectives. Book A helps children
to develop:
• an ability to make sense of text;
• grammatical awareness;
• skills in predicting words;

• an understanding of elements of grammar –
capital letters
full stops
the personal pronoun ‘I’
names;
• an understanding of different kinds of sentences and their structure, and the roles of different kinds of words.
Words from high-frequency lists are incorporated.
Book A promotes the development of children’s understanding of the ways in which sentences are constructed and the roles
of the words and punctuation marks in them. The children learn, for example, not only that there are words which denote
‘doing’ but also that they can not be removed from a sentence. They are encouraged to investigate the effects of changing
the word-order of a sentence. Investigation is given greater emphasis as the series progresses towards
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Book G.
To help pupils to work independently, the activities are presented in ways which are consistent so that even the youngest
children will recognise what they have to do. They incorporate strategies which encourage independent learning – for
example, ways in which children can check their own work or that of a partner.
Extension BLAKE EDUCATION
Most of the activity sheets end with a challenge (Now try this!) which reinforces and extends the children’s learning and
provides the teacher with an opportunity for assessment.
These more challenging activities might be appropriate for only a few children; it is not expected that the whole class should
complete them.
On some pages there is space for the children to complete the extension activities, but for others they will need a notebook
or separate sheet of paper.
Organisation
For many of the activities it will be useful to have available scissors, glue, wooden blocks (with which to make large dice),
word-banks, and a variety of dictionaries and reference books. Several activities can be re-used to provide more practice in
sentence-construction, by masking words and replacing them with others.
To help teachers to select appropriate learning experiences for their pupils, the activities are grouped into sections within each
book. The pages are not intended to be presented in the order in which they appear in the books, unless otherwise stated.
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