Alphabet Work begins with students and the teacher singing the alphabet song chorally.
Throughout Term One, the slides guide you through the following activities:
Toward the end of Term One, students will begin practising letter naming using the Playberry Laser Alphabet Card Deck. The Alphabet slides will guide you through using the Card Deck in the following ways:
If you’re using a phonological awareness program that includes letter naming, omit the letter naming section and only do it with the slides (as above).
As different schools use different handwriting script fonts, we have included the Playberry and the South Australian Modern Cursive Fonts. Schools need to develop agreements on which font they will teach and when they will teach the print, kicks and linked versions of these.
Teachers will need to select the slide with the font they are teaching.
Week 1: The Alphabet slides will guide you through various letter-naming activities.
From Week 2: The Alphabet Deck should be used, following instructions on the slides.
If the class requires more practice with letter naming, continue with the Alphabet Deck. The Alphabet Deck can also be used in Tier 2 Intervention.
If you are using a phonological awareness program that includes letter naming, omit the letter naming section and only do it with the slides (as above).
Students need to be writing on personal whiteboards and in writing books. When to use either depends on your purpose. We recommend that students use books at least once weekly.
Select the slide with the font you are teaching.
Students write the alphabet (lower case) alphabetically on their personal whiteboard (or book): a – m on one line and n – z on the next. As they write each letter, they name it as a group (chorally).
Students write the alphabet (lower case) on their whiteboard (or book) alphabetically: a – m on one line and n – z on the next. As they write each letter, they name it as a group (chorally).
The teacher:
Students practise a row of each letter, circling their best-formed letters. The teacher scans the room, correcting grip and letter formation, keeping a close eye on students needing more support.
.
Students need to be writing on personal whiteboards and in writing books. When to use either depends on your purpose. We recommend that students use books at least once weekly.
Select the slide with the font you are teaching.
Students write the alphabet (lower case) alphabetically on their personal whiteboard (or book): a – m on one line and n – z on the next. As they write each letter, they name it as a group (chorally). We recommend teaching cursive kicks as early as phase 3.
Students write the alphabet (lower case) on their whiteboard (or book) alphabetically: a – m on one line and n – z on the next. As they write each letter, they name it as a group (chorally).
The teacher:
Students practise a row of each letter, circling their best-formed letters. The teacher scans the room, correcting grip and letter formation, keeping a close eye on students needing more support
This is a multisensory routine where the students see a phonogram (front of card) and chorally recite the phoneme or phonemes that the phonogram represents. This drill is repeated daily to the point of automaticity and over-learning. Some students store Grapheme Phoneme Correspondences (GPCs) in long-term memory faster than others. However, the drills are helpful for all students, harmful to none and critical for some.
Reading cards are added to the deck once a grapheme has been taught as a new teaching point from the slides. The deck grows as each new grapheme is introduced. When the deck becomes too big, it can be halved, each half being reviewed on alternate days (this can start from Phase 2). In Phase 1, the whole deck should be reviewed daily.
When retrieval of a card has become fast and automatic, move that card to a separate review pack to be revised weekly or fortnightly. If a grapheme has been forgotten, it can be reintroduced to the daily review deck at any stage.
Where a phonogram represents multiple phonemes which have been taught:
Take out of the deck reading cards that students recite with complete automaticity. Having too many cards will add unnecessary time to the drill. Cards can be reintroduced to the deck if necessary.
The reading card deck can be shuffled and split with one half being used one day and the other half the next. You may wish to keep cards that need more practice cards in the deck at all times.
Take out of the deck reading cards that students recite with complete automaticity. Having too many cards will add unnecessary time to the drill. Cards can be reintroduced to the deck if necessary.
The reading card deck can be shuffled and split with one half being used one day and the other half the next. You may wish to keep cards that need more practice cards in the deck at all times.
It may feel like you are moving too fast for the class. Aim to bring the class up to a fast pace and keep them there. Otherwise, the pace will drop to an unengaging groan! The class must not be held to the pace of the slowest students. All students attend better if the pace is maintained. Going too slowly causes a drop in student attention.
New rules or concepts are taught in the ‘New Teaching Point’ section within the slides. An ‘I Do, We Do, You Do’ approach is used when each new rule or concept is first taught. This rule or concept is then reviewed in subsequent weeks using spaced retrieval practice.
Spelling Rules and Concept slides are read or recited aloud chorally with the whole class.
Lesson 1 (each week) has all the spelling rule slides taught in that phase so far. The slides begin with the complete rule or definition and then progress to having keywords blocked out so students have to retrieve them.
On other days of the week, the slides prompt students to apply learned rules or concepts. Students must write whole words or sentences in response to questions on their whiteboards. This gives the teacher feedback on whether the rule or concept has been mastered.
The recitation of rules must be fast-paced; otherwise, engagement will be lost.
Previously taught graphemes are reviewed daily as part of the Spelling Review Drill. Suggested graphemes are included in the slides; however, the teacher may manually add particular graphemes that need revising to the Weekly Planner. The graphemes will be read from the Weekly Planner.
There are two Spelling Review slides. Stop at the first slide and follow these steps:
The teacher reads the phonogram (f) and gives the keyword (photo). Students say “(f) is ‘ph’” and then write the letters ‘ph’
*The teacher monitors students (circulates and looks at whiteboards/books) as students complete this drill – if all students show mastery of the GPCs, there is no need to mark them as a group.
*If modelling of this drill is still required, the teacher can write on the blank Spelling Review Slide.
*Letters inside brackets represent a phoneme (f)
*Underlined letters represent letter names f
There are two sections where ‘Words to Read’ appears. The first section includes review words containing words with previously taught graphemes. The second section follows the new teaching point and incorporates words containing the new grapheme.
The Reading Fluency slide appears after the review’ Words to Read’.
Students read the words chorally. If errors are made within the choral reading, the teacher must prompt the class to decode and blend the word.
Students who’ve not yet orthographically mapped a word or spelling pattern must decode and blend to read the word.
PHASE 1: you may begin with the top row and include the second and third rows when students are blending with more ease.
This is designed to provide multiple exposures of words with previously taught GPCs to build up word reading fluency. The Reading Fluency slide is read from left to right using the same process as above, depending on the students’ stage of reading development. The slide can be read up to three times in one lesson. The teacher uses a pointer to help pace the exercise.
PHASE 1: you may begin with the top row and include the second and third rows when students are blending with more ease.
There are two sections where Words to Spell appear. The first section includes review words containing previously taught phonemes. The second follows the new teaching point and incorporates words containing the new grapheme. Each word will be read from the Weekly Planner.
Stop at the first slide and follow these steps:
One-Syllable Words:
Repeat for all words in the Weekly Planner. Modelling and scaffolding of this process will be required.
Two Syllable Words:
Repeat for all words in the Weekly Planner.
Teachers should actively monitor students during this time and ask for corrections to be made as they see them.
Go to the second Words to Spell slide, which includes the words on it.
Words can be read / spelt with letter names at the end of this drill (time permitting)
Complete the above process without breaking each word into its syllables or phonemes.
New Teaching Points include the introduction of new phonograms, spelling rules, grammar concepts and some morphology. These concepts will be presented in different ways depending on the content.
All elements of the New Teaching Point are included in the slides. There are also embedded voice recordings that can be used to assist in explicitly introducing new phonemes.
The New Teaching Point section of the lesson is designed to be a quick, explicit introduction to a new concept and should take 5 to 10 minutes, including all aspects of handwriting.
Students read words from the new teaching point chorally. If errors are made within the choral reading, the teacher must prompt the class to decode and blend the word.
PHASE 1: Students don’t have to read all six words. The class can be built up to to six words as their blending becomes more automatic.
There are two sections where ‘Words to Spell’ appear. The first section includes review words containing previously taught phonemes. The second follows the new teaching point and incorporates words containing the new grapheme. Each word will be read from the Weekly Planner.
NOT ALL WORDS HAVE TO BE USED. However, the goal is to work towards this.
Heart (Irregular) Words contain phone-grapheme correspondences (GPCs), which have not yet been taught, making the GPCs irregular for the students. Throughout all phase slides, Heart Words are introduced and reviewed using spaced retrieval practice.
Read the word to the students, explain its meaning and use it in a sentence:
“Said is the past tense of ‘say,’ like in the sentence ‘Tim said he was sick.’”
“The word said has three phonemes (s) (ĕ) (d).”
“The sound (s) is spelt with the letter s, and the sound (d) is spelt with d.”
“The sound (ĕ) is represented with ai in the word said.”
Read, Tap & Spell, Write – “Get it in the hand”
When reviewing Heart Words in subsequent lessons,
Do this once for each word.
This drill creates a multisensory (VAK) representation for each word that consists of an:
These three memory traces (VAK) integrate as a routine in long-term memory and support one another for accurate retrieval of the spelling of heart words. You will observe students privately use the routine to cue themselves when they struggle to retrieve a heart word.
*Heart Words with pink hearts are brand new to the Scope and Sequence and must be explicitly taught. Heart Words with green hearts have been introduced previously in the Scope and Sequence, so you can follow the directions for Reviewing Heart Words from day 1.
Each lesson has at least one dictation sentence. These sentences are designed to practice using the rules, concepts and spelling patterns most recently taught. Dictation is the most cognitively demanding task, so teachers must refrain from talking to the class while writing dictation sentences.
There are two ways that the dictation slides may be used.
Option 1:
Option 2:
Use the dictation slide for students to check and correct their sentences. This can be done in many ways at the teacher’s discretion.
Extending Advanced Students
Tip 18 (above) gives suggestions for extending advanced students. Depending on what explicit writing instruction you have been doing with students, additional ideas could be:
Connected texts are included each week, including heart words and words containing previously taught phonograms, spelling rules and concepts. The purpose of these texts is to develop passage reading fluency and to expand vocabulary.
Process for reading a connected text in Phases 1-3:
- teacher reads the text while students track – ‘I read’
- students read the text with the teacher – ‘We read.’
- students read text chorally – ‘You read’
Process for reading a connected text in Phase 4-6:
- teacher and students chorally read the whole text together
The connected texts can be used at other times, including Pair Reading, Fluency Pairs and Tier 2 intervention.
All Phases, 1-2 minutes
Each lesson has at least one vocabulary slide that provides definitions for any Tier Two or Three vocabulary used within the slides or the Connected Text for that day.
These can be discussed with students within the Phonology lesson. The teacher can also use them in more depth within other Vocabulary teaching.
Morphology lessons have been incorporated into Playberry Laser T1-2 from 2024. Dedicated morphology lessons follow our morphology scope and sequence, comprising one weekly lesson in phases 2-5 and all in phases 6-7.
Morphology lessons come in two types:
These begin in phase two, comprising one lesson per week, and continue to phases six and seven, where morphology becomes the focus of all lessons.
From phases two to five, there are two forms of standard morphology lessons: introduction lessons, which are dedicated to introducing a new morpheme, and revision lessons for consolidating newly learned morphemes as well as some other previously learned content. Lessons also incorporate some phonology revision.
In phases six and seven, a new morpheme is introduced in every lesson.
Phase 2-3
The fourth of the five weekly lessons (Thursday during a typical week).
Phase 4-5
The fourth of the four weekly lessons.
Phase 6-7
Every lesson.
Because 2024 sees the introduction of morphology to our resource, some students in existing Playberry Laser schools won’t have received morphology instruction prior to their point in the Playberry Laser scope and sequence. Classes new to Playberry Laser (entering the program higher than phase two) will also need to be caught up with the morphology instruction they have missed. Morphology catch-up lessons have been developed to get them up to speed.
Morphology Catch-up lessons are 45-minute lessons that include revision of previously taught morphemes, teaching of a new morpheme, and activities for practising the new morpheme (including a connected text).
Forty-five Catch-up lessons cover morphology from Phases two to four. These lessons should be used in place of the standard morphology lesson within the class’s phase. For example, if a Year Five class is working at Phase Four (but hasn’t learned any structured morphology before), they will forgo the standard morphology lesson (Lesson 4) and instead do a catch-up morphology lesson on this day.
3
Lessons 1-12 (12 lessons)
4
Lessons 1-27 (27 lessons)
5
Teacher’s discretion about which morphemes to teach based on the class’s needs.
You can decide to do additional catch-up lessons to catch up faster but should consider their class’s needs when deciding whether to catch them up any faster
Morphology lessons are a little less structured than phonology lessons. Teachers have more scope to allow exploratory discussions about words, not just those containing the new morpheme but other morphemes that pop up in the studied words.
In a catch-up morphology lesson to year six students on the prefix de- (from phase 3, week 23), following the introduction of de-, I asked students to share what words they believed had the prefix de-. One student responded with ‘decapitate’. Suddenly, we were discussing the root -capt- and -capit- (not taught until phase 7, week 2). Students took delight in discovering that ‘decapitate’ means the head going away from the body! Students were offering words like captain, captive and caption and seeing how -capt- / -capit- related to being taken, held, head or leader, depending on the word. Whilst not allowing the lesson sequence to be derailed, this was a teachable moment too critical to miss. It only took an additional minute but brought much joy and engagement as well as frontloading for the future teaching of -capt- and -capit- in phase seven.
You can always decide to do some additional morphology inspired by a Playberry Laser lesson at another time. The online Word Cracker, www.wordcracking.xyz, is an excellent resource for this outside of Playberry Laser lessons.
This is a multisensory routine where the students see the morpheme (front of card), chorally recite the meaning and make the multisensory gesture simultaneously. This drill is repeated in all morphology lessons to the point of automaticity and over-learning. The gestures on the back of the cards are only suggestions. A class can make up their own.
Morpheme cards are added to the deck once a morpheme has been taught as a new teaching point from the slides. The deck grows as each new morpheme is introduced. When the deck becomes too big, it can be halved, each half being reviewed on alternate lessons.
When retrieval of a card has become fast and automatic, move that card to a separate review pack to be revised weekly or fortnightly. If a morpheme has been forgotten, it can be reintroduced to the review deck at any stage.
Daily review routine:
“Prefix dif- means not.”
“Root word -flu- means to flow.”
We strongly recommend that students spell suffixes out using letter names. This makes it more likely that suffixes will be spelled correctly:
“Suffix i-s-e means to become like.”
“Suffix e–d means verb past tense.”
Like with the Reading Card Deck, aim to bring the class up to a fast pace and keep them there. Otherwise, the pace will drop to an unengaging groan! The class must not be held to the pace of the slowest students. All students attend better if the pace is maintained. Going too slowly causes a drop in student attention.
New morphemes are taught in the introduction lessons. An ‘I Do, We Do, You Do’ approach is used when each new morpheme is first taught. This morpheme is then reviewed in subsequent weeks using spaced retrieval practice. These slides also review some rules and concepts from phonology lessons.
Morphology concept slides are read or recited aloud chorally with the whole class.
Like phonology rules and concepts, the slides begin with the complete rule or definition and then progress to having keywords blocked out so students have to retrieve them.
The recitation of rules must be fast-paced; otherwise, engagement will be lost.
The slides guide you through the introduction of the new morpheme. Use the language from the slides. The card for the new morpheme can be shown to students, and the class can decide on a multisensory gesture or learn the suggested gesture on the card.
The teacher reads the learning intention from the screen and students listen, e.g., “Today we are learning about the root -sect-”.
The students and teacher then read the learning intention together.
The teacher reads the meaning, e.g., “The root -sect- means divide or cut”.
The students and teacher then read the meaning together.
You can switch between “I do” and “We do” as you please, and you may also do a “You do” and have students read without you as well.
Some slides provide an example word, and some don’t. If one isn’t provided, skip forward to the Words to Build slides and use the first word from that. In the lesson on root -sect-, ‘bisect’ can be used.
“An example word is ‘bisect’. Prefix bi- means ‘two’ and the root -sect- means ‘divide or cut’, so if we bisect something, we divide or cut it into two (usually equal) pieces.”
Of course, not all morpheme meanings are as easy to explain, and you may need to do some thinking about your explanation beforehand.
Here, students and the teacher work from the slides to read and record words that contain the new morpheme.
These words are written into the provided worksheets (resources section) or a student workbook (the lexicon book), becoming a record of morphemes and example words.
If students are recording the new morpheme in their books (not the worksheet), they need to begin by setting up their page by writing the morpheme at the top with its meaning. The words to build will be listed underneath.
The students and teacher then read the definition and word from the slide, e.g., “To cut something into pieces is to bisect it.”
The students record the word neatly in their workbooks or worksheets.
This is repeated for all Words to Build slides. Some words in the set may need a little explaining as the morpheme’s meaning may not be as transparent as in other words.
Turn and talk may be used for students to discuss possible meanings, and non-volunteers can be asked to respond to questions. It’s essential to ask the question to the whole class before using pop sticks to call on a non-volunteer to respond. Refer to the TAPPLE (EDI™) method.
Students, or students and the teacher, read the words chorally. Like in phonology lessons, if errors are made within the choral reading, the teacher prompts the class to re-read (decode if necessary).
At the end of the choral read, the teacher may ask a question and use pop sticks to check that students understand the morpheme and its meaning.
Each lesson has at least one dictation sentence. These sentences are designed to practice writing words containing the new morpheme and previously taught material. Dictation is the most cognitively demanding task, so teachers must refrain from talking to the class while writing dictation sentences.
There are two ways that the dictation slides may be used.
Option 1:
Option 2:
Use the dictation slide for students to check and correct their sentences. This can be done in many ways at the teacher’s discretion.
Sentence creation can be taken in any direction you like, depending on what you have been working with in terms of sentence types. If the class was doing the lesson on -tent- -tens- or -tend-, you might ask students to:
Students can be asked to practise any sentence types they have learned during this activity.
I Read, We Read, You Read, Choral Read or Paired Reading.
The text includes words from Phonology lessons (Phases 2-4) and the new morpheme.
Connected texts are included in each lesson, including words containing the new morpheme heart words and words with previously taught phonograms, spelling rules and concepts. The purpose of these texts is to develop passage reading fluency and to expand vocabulary.
Each new morpheme has a connected text. It can be found on the downloadable Connected Text document for the corresponding Phase and Week. This is in the Resources section of the platform. You can search using the name of the morpheme. The Connected Texts can be used for fluency reading pairs, homework, and Tier 2 reading groups to support students’ reading.
There are Morphology Task cards for each Morpheme. These use the connected text to reinforce the new Morpheme. These can be set for independent work or as homework.
Some lessons have a vocabulary slide that defines any tier two or three vocabulary words used within the Connected Text for that day.
These can be discussed with students within the lesson. The teacher can also use them in more depth within other vocabulary teaching.
This is a multisensory routine where the students see the morpheme (front of card), chorally recite the meaning and make the multisensory gesture simultaneously. This drill is repeated in all morphology lessons to the point of automaticity and over-learning. The gestures on the back of the cards are only suggestions. A class can make up their own.
Morpheme cards are added to the deck once a morpheme has been taught as a new teaching point from the slides. The deck grows as each new morpheme is introduced. When the deck becomes too big, it can be halved, each half being reviewed on alternate lessons.
When retrieval of a card has become fast and automatic, move that card to a separate review pack to be revised weekly or fortnightly. If a morpheme has been forgotten, it can be reintroduced to the review deck at any stage.
Daily review routine:
“Prefix dif- means not.”
“Root word -flu- means to flow.”
We strongly recommend that students spell suffixes out using letter names. This makes it more likely that suffixes will be spelled correctly:
“Suffix i-s-e means to become like.”
“Suffix e–d means verb past tense.”
Like with the Reading Card Deck, aim to bring the class up to a fast pace and keep them there. Otherwise, the pace will drop to an unengaging groan! The class must not be held to the pace of the slowest students. All students attend better if the pace is maintained. Going too slowly causes a drop in student attention.
Morphology concept slides are read or recited aloud chorally with the whole class.
Like phonology rules and concepts, the slides begin with the complete rule or definition and then progress to having keywords blocked out so students have to retrieve them.
The recitation of rules must be fast-paced; otherwise, engagement will be lost.
In Phases Two to Five, a slide prompts students with a definition, and students try to guess the correct word (that contains a previously taught morpheme) and write it on their whiteboards. The following slide reveals the answer.
In Phases Six and Seven, a slide provides multiple choices, and students write their choices on their whiteboards.
The teacher, with or without the students, reads the definition from the screen, e.g., “A group of people moving forward can be called a…”.
The students write their choices on their whiteboards, and the answer is revealed, and students make any necessary corrections.
Alternatively, the teacher may ask for a pair share where students decide on an answer together and record it on their whiteboards. The teacher may also pull a pop-stick to check answers.
Students independently write the solutions to the word sums on their whiteboards or workbooks (lexicons). Some words will need a spelling rule applied. Word sums will only require the use of spelling rules that have been previously taught.
Once completed, the students correct any errors. Next, the words are chorally read by the teacher and students, or the students.
This range of engaging activities gets students working individually or in pairs to apply their knowledge.
Activities can be completed on student whiteboards or in lexicon student workbooks.
Teachers can check for understanding during the lesson or collect workbooks for marking.
This is a multisensory routine where the students see the morpheme (front of card), chorally recite the meaning and make the multisensory gesture simultaneously. This drill is repeated in all morphology lessons to the point of automaticity and over-learning. The gestures on the back of the cards are only suggestions. A class can make up their own.
Morpheme cards are added to the deck once a morpheme has been taught as a new teaching point from the slides. The deck grows as each new morpheme is introduced. When the deck becomes too big, it can be halved, each half being reviewed on alternate lessons.
When retrieval of a card has become fast and automatic, move that card to a separate review pack to be revised weekly or fortnightly. If a morpheme has been forgotten, it can be reintroduced to the review deck at any stage.
Daily review routine:
“Prefix dif- means not.”
“Root word -flu- means to flow.”
We strongly recommend that students spell suffixes out using letter names. This makes it more likely that suffixes will be spelled correctly:
“Suffix i-s-e means to become like.”
“Suffix e–d means verb past tense.”
Like with the Reading Card Deck, aim to bring the class up to a fast pace and keep them there. Otherwise, the pace will drop to an unengaging groan! The class must not be held to the pace of the slowest students. All students attend better if the pace is maintained. Going too slowly causes a drop in student attention.
Morphology concept slides are read or recited aloud chorally with the whole class.
Like phonology rules and concepts, the slides begin with the complete rule or definition and then progress to having keywords blocked out so students have to retrieve them.
The recitation of rules must be fast-paced; otherwise, engagement will be lost.
Slides prompt students with a definition, and students try to guess the correct word (that contains a previously taught morpheme) and write it on their whiteboards. The following slide reveals the answer.
The teacher, with or without the students, reads the definition from the screen, e.g., “A group of people moving forward can be called a…”.
The students write their choices on their whiteboards, and the answer is revealed, and students make any necessary corrections.
Alternatively, the teacher may ask for a pair share where students decide on an answer together and record it on their whiteboards. The teacher may also pull a pop-stick to check answers.
The slides guide you through the introduction of the new morpheme. Use the language from the slides. The card for the new morpheme can be shown to students, and the class can decide on a multisensory gesture or learn the suggested gesture on the card.
The teacher reads the learning intention from the screen, e.g., “Today we are learning about the root -sect-”.
The students and teacher then read the learning intention together.
The teacher reads the meaning, e.g., “The root -sect- means divide or cut”.
The students and teacher then read the meaning together.
The teacher reads the learning intention from the screen and students listen, e.g., “Today we are learning about the root -sect-”.
The students and teacher then read the learning intention together.
The teacher reads the meaning, e.g., “The root -sect- means divide or cut”.
The students and teacher then read the meaning together.
You can switch between “I do” and “We do” as you please, and you may also do a “You do” and have students read without you as well.
Some slides provide an example word, and some don’t. If one isn’t provided, skip forward to the Words to Build slides and use the first word from that. In the lesson on root -sect-, ‘bisect’ can be used.
“An example word is ‘bisect’. Prefix bi- means ‘two’ and the root -sect- means ‘divide or cut’, so if we bisect something, we divide or cut it into two (usually equal) pieces.”
Of course, not all morpheme meanings are as easy to explain, and you may need to do some thinking about your explanation beforehand.
Here, students and the teacher work from the slides to read and record words that contain the new morpheme.
These words are written into the provided worksheets (resources section) or a student workbook (the lexicon book), becoming a record of morphemes and example words.
If students are recording the new morpheme in their books (not the worksheet), they need to begin by setting up their page by writing the morpheme at the top with its meaning. The words to build will be listed underneath.
The students and teacher then read the definition and word from the slide, e.g., “To cut something into pieces is to bisect it.”
The students record the word neatly in their workbooks or worksheets.
This is repeated for all Words to Build slides. Some words in the set may need a little explaining as the morpheme’s meaning may not be as transparent as in other words.
Turn and talk may be used for students to discuss possible meanings, and non-volunteers can be asked to respond to questions. It’s essential to ask the question to the whole class before using pop sticks to call on a non-volunteer to respond. Refer to the TAPPLE (EDI™) method.
Students, or students and the teacher, read the words chorally. Like in phonology lessons, if errors are made within the choral reading, the teacher prompts the class to re-read (decode if necessary).
At the end of the choral read, the teacher may ask a question and use pop sticks to check that students understand the morpheme and its meaning.
Sentence creation can be taken in any direction you like, depending on what you have been working with in terms of sentence types. If the class was doing the lesson on -tent- -tens- or -tend-, you might ask students to:
Students can be asked to practise any sentence types they have learned during this activity.
Students independently write the solutions to the word sums on their whiteboards or workbooks (lexicons). Some words will need a spelling rule applied. Word sums will only require the use of spelling rules that have been previously taught.
Once completed, the students correct any errors. Next, either the teacher or the students chorally read the words.
EXTENSION IDEAS: For quick finishers:
Ask them to find and annotate any words where a spelling rule has been applied. Has an ‘e’ been dropped, or is a final consonant on the root doubled?
Can they label definitions of the morphemes in any of the words?
Can students think of other words with the target morpheme and add them to their list?
This range of engaging activities gets students working individually or in pairs to apply their knowledge.
Activities can be completed on student whiteboards or in lexicon student workbooks.
Teachers can check for understanding during the lesson or collect workbooks for marking.
I Read, We Read, You Read, Choral Read or Paired Reading.
The text includes words from Phonology lessons (Phases 2-4) and the new morpheme.
Connected texts are included in each lesson, including words containing the new morpheme heart words and words with previously taught phonograms, spelling rules and concepts. The purpose of these texts is to develop passage reading fluency and to expand vocabulary.
Each new morpheme has a connected text. It can be found on the downloadable Connected Text document for the corresponding Phase and Week. This is in the Resources section of the platform. You can search using the name of the morpheme. The Connected Texts can be used for fluency reading pairs, homework, and Tier 2 reading groups to support students’ reading.
There are Morphology Task cards for each Morpheme. These use the connected text to reinforce the new morpheme. These can be set for independent work or as homework.
In this edition:
Assessment: There’s tests and then there’s tests! …
The difference between assessing reading and spelling…
New Assessments on the platform…
Pure sounds are crucial to forming accurate mental representations of speech sounds (phonemes). Most of us have taught from programs that are a little sloppy on phoneme pronunciation and have formed not-so-great pronunciations. This video covers some of the trickier phonemes and their pronunciations in Playberry Laser T1-2. Some schools use this video in staff meetings to get sounds pure and have a good laugh at each other! Some teachers show this to students, and some even send it home to parents.
In this edition:
Additive Blending in Phase 1 …
Teaching Heart Words Well …
2025 Training Dates …
Phase 0 Has Lift-Off! …
Lesson Videos ….
We Have a How-to Section
Watch Bill Teach a Tier 2 intervention Group Lesson.
Playberry Laser has freed teachers from having to create materials so they can get on with the job of teaching. This has a downside. When teachers are provided with materials, they miss the learning that comes with designing the instructional materials and because of this, miss important learning about ‘why’ of the ‘how’ we ask them to teach. This places a huge importance on leaders to know how the materials are to be used and to set up cycles of observation and feedback with teachers.
Leaders, where is where your schools need you to get brave!
We acknowledge and pay respect to the past, present and future Traditional Custodians and Elders of this nation and the continuation of cultural, spiritual and educational practices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
