Year 1 Bulletin

Learning Intention: To learn that the /ai/ digraph makes a long /a/ sound in some words.

Learning Experience Overview:

In Grade 1 we focus on phoneme and grapheme knowledge to help our spelling, amongst other areas of literacy. Digraphs are when more than one grapheme comes together to form a different sound. For example, when written together, the /a/ and /i/ graphemes make the digraph /ai/, like in ‘rain’. In class, we showed the students images of words that contain our focus digraph.

They had a go at spelling the words and underlining the digraph on their mini whiteboards. After, students had a go at exploring the digraph further in a spelling activity where they wrote sentences with /ai/ words.

We do:

As a class, we looked at pictures where the words contain the /ai/ digraph and have a go at spelling them on our mini whiteboards.

Prompts

What are these words that use the /ai/ digraph?
What sounds do these letters make individually?
In what other words do we find the /ai/ digraph?
Where in the word is it usually positioned?
Is it a long or short /a/ sound?

You do:

Then, our students went off to complete an activity where they had a go at writing sentences using as many words with the /ai/ digraph as they could fit.

Share and reflect:

At the end of the lesson, we all came together to share our work with the class.

How you might like to continue learning at home:

Look out for the /ai/ digraph in readers and other books you read at home.
Have a go at writing down the words you found and spelling them. Underline the /ai/ digraph.
Have a think, can you spot any different digraphs which make the long /a/ sound

Some of the work Grade 1 produced in our spelling lesson: