Safari Spelling - Beginner

Age Group: Pre-K or Kindergarten

Learning Objectives

Students will begin to orally blend the onsets, rimes, and phonemes of words and recognize that spoken words are represented in written language by a specific sequence of letters. They will also isolate and pronounce the initial, medial vowel, and final sounds (phonemes) in three-phoneme words, in addition to blend two to three phonemes into recognizable words. Practice encoding. (CA-Pre-K & K Standards)

Materials

• Square Panda Learning System
• Printed pictures of animals (use three-phoneme animals for Pre-K)
• Reward (animal stickers)

Introduction

Explain to students that they will learn how to spell and sound out words. This helps them to read and write. They will do this by sounding out each letter in a word. They will be using animal words for this activity.

Activity

• Students will be divided into small groups. Each group will receive an animal picture and a Square Panda playset that is running the Lagoon learning game.
• They are on a mission to find out how to spell the name of the animal.
• Each student in the group will take turns guessing what letter comes first, next, etc.
• They will physically place the smart letter that they guess onto the playset and test out the sound with the Lagoonlizard by dragging the letter into the lizard’s mouth. The next student will then go and try to guess the next letter.
• Once the group spells out the entire word, they will receive an animal sticker!

Guided Example

• The students see a picture of a snake.
• Ask your students what sound the word snake starts with by sounding out the first letter as a class /s/.
• When a student guesses, they can come place the letter “S” onto the playset and test their answer using Lagoon.
• If they are correct, then the activity continues by sounding out the subsequent letter, and a new student can take a turn placing it on the playset.

Follow-Up

When a group finishes, they can play Square Panda Jiggity Jamble to continue practicing phonics.

Assessment

Each group will stand up and spell out their animal to the class, and the class will repeat each letter back to them like a group cheer.

Safari Spelling - Advanced

Age Group: Kindergarten - First Grade

Learning Objectives

Students will begin to orally blend the onsets, rimes, and phonemes of words and recognize that spoken words are represented in written language by a specific sequence of letters. They will also isolate and pronounce the initial, medial vowel, and final sounds (phonemes) in three-phoneme words, in addition to blend two to three phonemes into recognizable words. Practice encoding. (CA-Pre-K & K Standards)

Materials

• Square Panda Learning System
• A list of multi-syllabic words to spell (use four to five-phoneme animals for Kindergarten classrooms)
• Rewards (stickers)

Introduction

Explain to students that they will learn how to translate the sound they hear into written words by using the Square Panda learning system.

Activity

• Can be done as a whole-class activity or as small-group activity with pairs of students.
• Teacher will spell a multi-syllabic word paying close attention to clearly articulating each phoneme.
• Each student or pair of students will try to spell the words they hear using the Square Panda playset and the Lagoon lizard.
• Students test out whether they spelled the correct word with the Lagoon lizard by dragging the letter into the lizard’s mouth.
• Teacher then spells the next word and the process repeats.

Guided Example

• The students hear the first word on the teacher’s spelling list.
• The students try to sound out each phoneme in the word either on their own or together as a pair.
• Each time they successfully sound out a phoneme, they place the corresponding letter onto the playset. Once the word is completed they test their answer using Lagoon.
• If they are correct, then the activity continues with the teacher sounding out the next word.
• Each time a student or pair of students spells a word correctly, a reward will be earned.

Follow-Up

When a group finishes, they can play Square Panda Letter Lab to continue practicing phonics.

Assessment

Each group will stand up and spell out their animal to the class, and the class will repeat each letter back to them like a group cheer.