© <strong>Letterland</strong> International Limited. All rights reserved.• Silent letters are not tapped, e.g. through, climb,and gave.Finger Pop-UpsFinger Pop-Ups may be easier for some childrenwho do not yet have the coordination for FingerTapping. When children are reading unknownwords, they begin with a fist and pop up one fingerfor each sound in the word. Then they pull theirfingers back into a fist as they blend all the soundsinto a word.Finger TappingIn Finger Tapping the child touches each finger tothe thumb in sequence saying a sound with eachtap. Then the child sweeps the thumb across thefingers to blend the sounds into a word (or simplytouches all the fingers to the thumb at once).FingerPop-UpsFingerTappingActivities for SegmentingWords to SpellUse the activities below when the objective is tolisten for the sounds to spell a word. Suchactivities include Live Spelling, spelling wordswith <strong>Letterland</strong> Word Builders, and any time achild is unsure of the spelling of a word.Playing Pitch and Catch with Words’This is a good way to make sure you haveeveryone’s attention and to prepare them to say thewhole word in a normal fashion before attemptingto segment the word. You can use it with bothrubber-band-stretching and Finger Soundingbelow.• Tell the children you are going to pretend topitch a word to them. Hold up you handready to catch a ball. You catch theball by repeating the word I say.• Say the word as you make a pitching motion.The children repeat the word as they make acatching motion.• Now their hands are up and they are ready torubber-band-stretch the word or to FingerSound.Rubber-band-stretching• Tell the children to hold their hands in front ofthem palm to palm. Let’s pretend we havea big rubber-band wrapped around ourhands and we want to stretch it out butwe have to go slow because it is astrong rubber-band.• Have them slowly stretch their hands out andback in a few times. When we bring ourhands back together we have to useour strong muscles and make our handscome back together slowly and silentlybecause we are going to be listening forsounds in words.• Let’s try stretching out someone’s name.How about Jasmine. It may sound likeyour Momma’s calling you from downthe block. Everyone slowly pulls their handsapart as they say, “Jaaaasssmmmiiiinnnne.”Try a few other names to get children used to theidea of slowly saying all the sounds in the wordin stretched out fashion.• ‘Stop’ sounds such as those for b, c, d, g, j, k, p,q, t, and x can not be stretched’ but most othersounds including all the vowels can beprolonged.• To rubber-band-stretch a word for spellingeveryone says the word slowly as they pull theirhands apart as shown below.ssssăăădssss ăăă d• Then everyone begins to stretch the word again,this time ‘jiggling out’ the first sound by movingthe hands back and forth a bit just afterbeginning to say the word. Then stretch aboutmidway and ‘jiggle out’ the vowel sound. Finallystretch hands out to the farthest position andjiggle out the final sound. (If using a word withmore than three sounds, then stop at the35
© <strong>Letterland</strong> International Limited. All rights reserved.approximate place in the movement when youare saying each sound.)• When children are first learning to segment, e.g.in Live Spelling, you may need to stop afterjiggling out each sound and decide which<strong>Letterland</strong>er to put in place as you build theword. This choosing a letter or <strong>Letterland</strong>er oneat a time could also be used with <strong>Letterland</strong>Word Builders or for writing words.• Once you are confident your children can hearall the sounds in most three sound words, youmay want to switch to Finger Sounding for mostactivities. Always return to rubber-bandstretchingwhenever children are havingdifficulty segmenting a word. It will be usefulwhen you move from three phoneme words tofour phonemes beginning with Unit 11.Finger SoundingFinger Sounding works for both blending andsegmenting once children are confident with theseskills.• For segmenting you will want to first pitch theword for children to catch. They repeat the wordas they catch it.• Then they use Finger Pop-Ups or FingerTapping as they say each sound in the word.• Then they are ready for Live Spelling, buildingthe word with magnetic letters, or writing theword.• If needed, tap the word again, stopping on thefirst sound to select the first letter or‘<strong>Letterland</strong>er’ to spell the word. Tap the wordagain for each sound, stopping as you say theneeded sound to select the letter.Game of the WeekThe game of the week activities are all designed togive children practice in writing and reading theirwords with the Game of the Week. There are fivedifferent games for you to use on a rotating basis,one each week. All make use of one or tworeproducible pages found on the Teacher’s <strong>Guide</strong>CD G1.• Each Unit includes a suggested Game of theWeek. However, you may choose to playanother game. Any of the games can be playedwith any of the Units. You may want yourchildren to play the same game for severalweeks to learn the procedures better. After theyhave tried them all, you may want to let the classchoose the game.• Children prepare game materials For all thegames, children must write the words from theirStudent List for the week on either a game boardor on game word cards on Day 2 of the Unit.They will usually be motivated to write carefullyand neatly because they know the page will beused to play a game on Day 4 with a partner, asmall group, or the whole class.• Which words? On all the games, there arespaces for 14-15 words which is usually enoughfor all the ten List A, B, or C words and theTricky Words (usually two to four). If childrendo not have spaces for all the words, they maychoose which ones to leave out. If they haveextra spaces, tell them to choose Story Words orReview Words to fill the page.• Teacher Check There are two boxes on each ofthe game pages for you to check, eitherapproving their written work or requiring themto redo it. You may want to give them anothercopy if they need redo it rather than having themtry to erase and rewrite on the same page.• Variations Each game includes suggestionsfor one or more variations in how the game isplayed. You could play the game withoutvariations the first few times you play it, thenadd the variations later to rekindle interest inthe game.Each game is described in detail below.Bouncy Ben’s Bingo GameMaterials Pocket Chart, Bingo Board for eachchild, Unit Word Cards (List A, B, or C, TrickyWords, and if needed, Story Words and/or ReviewWords), plastic chips or dried beans or buttons(10-12 per child).36