26/06/2020
Enjoy the holidays everybody! I look forward to seeing you all in September.
Kind regards
Rosaleen O Donovan
22/06/2020
Good morning all.
I hope that you are well.
It is hard to believe that we are now in the final week of the school year. Well done to everyone for your continued engagement with learning and with school work in what were strange, and often difficult, circumstances. We look forward to a gradual return to normality, even if it is being described as a “new normality”.
This week, as you know, is our “virtual sports week”. Everyone is invited to participate in the activities, and to share their pics and clips. Hopefully, the weather will favour these activities. For the summer, it would be great if we could keep up as much walking and outdoor activities as possible. Below, I am uploading a treasure hunt of wildflowers and weeds. This will keep you busy on a walk, and help children to become familiar with the names of common wildflowers.
Over the summer, it is important to keep up as much recreational reading as possible. Enjoyment of books is the key here, so it is important that the reading material is not too difficult for your child to read with ease. Reading with your child and reading to your child are enjoyable and worthwhile practices to establish. Audiobooks are great too, and are becoming increasingly popular.
Another good idea is to revise and practise tables occasionally. A fun way to consolidate this learning is to play the game “hit the button”. I have included a link for this game here.
https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button
If you would like to develop some of your drawing skills over the summer, I recommend using the Muffalo Potato clips on YouTube. You can learn how to draw animals, cartoon characters, household items and even superheroes using only letters and numbers. Over the weekend, I learned how to draw Batman wearing a mask! Just go to YouTube and search for Muffalo Potato drawings.
Wishing you well for the week ahead. As always, I can be contacted on r.odonovan@upperglanmirens.ie.
Kind regards
Rosaleen O Donovan
15/06/2020
Good morning everyone.
I hope that you are all well.
Last week, I wrote about phonological awareness; specifically, about deleting the initial sound from a word, and encouraging your your child to work out what “new” word was made as a result.
Today, I will share a similar activity, but, this time, we will be deleting the final sound, or phoneme, from the word.
Below, are some examples of “real” words which are created when the final sound, or phoneme, has been omitted.
Try them out with your child. Say the full word slowly and clearly, for example, “team”. Ask them what is left when you take away the “m”. Remember to use the “m” sound as opposed to naming the letter m. Phonological awareness is all about sounds rather than letter knowledge. As with other phonological awareness activities, the child does not need to see the word. This is a listening rather than a reading activity.
nose save niece life
mice couch page beach
force seat grape team
bone mean rice pave
life bike make pipe
group boat soup beef
dice treat soak rose
neat farm teach scorn
cart wind lamp paint
heard grasp belt build
Syllable Activity
Here is an activity which can help your child to become familiar with breaking up words into syllables. To enable your child to build up some confidence in this skill, you should always start with compound words, so that when the word is broken up, or segmented, into syllables, the syllables make sense as words in their own right. An example of this is the word “playground” which breaks up to make “play” and “ground”.
Below are some more examples which you might like to use.
sailboat sometimes football
hairbrush mushroom horseshoe
popcorn railroad helpful
doghouse birthday sunshine
Wishing you well for the week ahead. Please contact me with any queries on r.odonovan@upperglanmirens.ie
Kind regards,
Rosaleen O Donovan
08/06/2020
Hello everybody.
I hope that all is well with you.
I am attaching one more list of similes this week for you to try out with your child.
Below is another list of ideas for the language activity “How are they the same? How are they different?” Remember to use the prompt questions for describing objects when encouraging your child to tell you how things are the same/different.
Similarities and Differences C
Phonological Awareness
Over the past number of weeks, I have posted some ideas and activities relating to the development of phonological awareness skills.
Another important aspect of phonological awareness is the ability to delete sounds, or phonemes, from words, and to recognise the new word which is created, be it a “real” word, or a pseudoword.
Below are some examples of “real” words which are created when the initial sound is omitted. Try them out with your child. Say the full word slowly and clearly, for example, “bat”. Ask them what is left if you take away the “b”. Remember to use the “b” sound rather than naming the letter b. Phonological awareness is all about sounds rather than letter knowledge. As with other phonological awareness activities, the child does not need to see the word, as it is a listening rather than a reading activity.
bat hand tin box
ham bend cup sink
tan witch lark till
has lit pant tall
I hope that you all have a good week, especially now that we can venture further afield! As always, I can be contacted on r.odonovan @upperglanmirens.ie.
Kind regards
Rosaleen O Donovan
02/06/2020
Hello everyone.
I hope that you are well, and that you are all enjoying this current spell of wonderful weather. It certainly makes things a lot easier when you can get out and about and enjoy the sunshine!
This week, I am uploading some more similes for you to explore and use with your child. Many similes refer to animals, and, through them, we can learn something about the nature of these animals. Examples are “as cross as a bull”, “as gentle as a lamb”, as wise as an owl”.
Last week, I wrote about the language activity “How are they the same? How are they different?” Below is another list of sample ideas which you could use for this activity.
Similarities and Differences B
Guessing games such as Twenty Questions and board games like Guess Who? and Headbanz are very useful for building skills in describing objects, people and animals. The questions below are helpful prompts when encouraging your child to describe an object.
What does it do?
Where would you find it?
What colour is it?
What size is it?
What shape is it?
What are the different parts in it?
How does it feel?
Wishing you well for the week ahead. Please contact me on r.odonovan@upperglanmirens.ie if you have any questions.
Kind regards,
Rosaleen O Donovan
25/05/2020
Hello everybody.
I hope that you all continue to keep safe and well.
This week, I am uploading some similes for you to explore and use with your child. We use similes such as “as white as snow” and “as clever as a fox” in our everyday language, so it is good to discuss them, and to focus on their meanings. Older children might like to try using them in their written work. It is also fun to make up your own similes, and to use them when appropriate.
Below are some ideas for other language development activities.
1.How are they the same?How are they different?
Pick two objects with which the child is familiar. They can be real objects in the house, pictures of objects/food/animals, or you could simply name them orally. Encourage your child to tell you in what ways they are the same, and in what ways they are different.
Examples:
rope/shoelace
They are the same because you can tie them both in a knot or a bow. They are different because you use a rope for tying big objects, and a shoe lace is for tying your shoe.
pencil/pen
They are the same because both are used for writing. They are different because a pen uses ink, and a pencil uses pencil lead.
apple/biscuit
They are the same because they are both food items. They are different because an apple is a fruit, and a biscuit is a baked item.
I have uploaded a list of sample ideas below for this activity.
Similarities and Differences A
2.Opposites
See how quickly you can come up with the opposites of common words, for example, fast/slow, day/night, tall/short etc.
Remember, practice makes perfect!
As always, I can be contacted on r.odonovan@upperglanmirens.ie.
Have a good week.
Regards,
Rosaleen O Donovan
18/05/2020
Hello everybody.
I hope that you are well, and that you enjoyed the weekend.
This week, I am uploading some more idioms for you to explore. I am also sharing some ideas about how to develop skills in phonological awareness. Finally, I will give a few tips on how to develop summarising skills.
As always, if you would like to contact me, you can email me on r.odonovan@upperglanmirens.ie.
Have a good week.
Kind regards,
Rosaleen O Donovan
Phonological Awareness
An important aspect of phonological awareness is the ability to pick out individual sounds in words. The easiest sounds to identify are the initial or beginning sounds. Next, are the ending sounds, and, finally, the medial (middle) sounds.
You can help your child to practise picking out individual sounds in words by doing the following activities:
1.Name two words, for example, “tap” and “cake”/ “dig” and “dance”. Do they have the same beginning sound? Yes or No.
Remember, this is a listening activity. The child shouldn’t read or even see the words.
2.Do the same activity, but focus on ending sounds. Examples are “pack“/”lick” (yes, same ending sound), “big“/”fun” (no).
3.If your child is ready for it, increase the level of difficulty in the preceding activities by choosing words with similar sounds at the beginning or end, for example, “dog”/ “tick”, “cap“/”cab“.
The most commonly confused phonemes or sounds are d and t; b and p; m and n; g and ck; f and v; w and r.
Note: It does not matter whether or not the words you pick rhyme with each other. In these activities, you are only focusing on the initial or final sounds.
I recommend visiting https://blog.allaboutlearningpress.com. Search for phonological awareness. You will find very clear explanations of the various aspects of phonological awareness, along with useful resources and games. I particularly likes the games “Go Find It” and “Help the Monkeys”.
Language Skills Using Texts
I have written a little about using a paragraph of text, a cartoon or a picture to develop skills in locating the main idea, and in paraphrasing. Another such skill is summarising. Encourage your child to “sum up” what they read or see in a few short sentences. If the text/picture tells a story (narrative), you can use helpful questions to structure the summary, such as, “what happened first?”, “what happened then?”, “what was the final part of the story?”. If the piece is non-fiction, help your child to identify the most important pieces of information to be summarised. As always, practice makes perfect!
11/05/2020
Hello everybody.
I hope that you all continue to keep safe and well.
This week, I am sharing some more idioms with you. You can explore what they mean, and think of situations when you might use them. Older children might try to group idioms into categories, for example, idioms relating to parts of the body (“it costs an arm and a leg”, “she gave me the cold shoulder”), idioms relating to animals (“pigs might fly”, “a horse of a different colour”), idioms relating to sport etc.
Below, I am suggesting a few games which you can play with your child to develop their skills in categorisation. I mentioned in an earlier posting that categorisation is a very important language skill.
Categorisation Games
1.Who game: take turns asking and answering who questions, for example, who takes care of sick animals? who helps us when we have a toothache?
2.When game: ask/answer when questions, for example, when do we dress up in scary costumes? when do we hunt for chocolate eggs?
3.What game: ask/answer what questions, for example, what keeps food cold in your kitchen? what do you wear when you go swimming?
4.Where game: ask/answer where questions, for example, where do you watch television? where do we dry our clothes?
5.Category lists game: encourage your child to name as many things as possible which fit in a given category, for example, fruit, toys, buildings, people who wear uniforms, grassy places etc. You can turn it into a speed test and award points to increase the challenge and the fun.
Language Skills Using Text
Last week, I wrote a little about locating the main idea in a paragraph of text, a cartoon or picture. Another skill which can be developed in the same way is paraphrasing. Encourage your child to read a paragraph or look at a picture, then paraphrase or retell what they read or saw in their own words. As with locating the main idea, children might find this concept difficult at first, and will benefit from the example you give by first modelling it for them.
As always, I can be contacted through r.odonovan@upperglanmirens.ie if you have any queries.
Wishing you all the best for the week ahead.
Regards,
Rosaleen O Donovan
05/05/2020
Hello everybody.
I hope that you are all well.
Well done if you are managing to keep up with some school work. Remember, a little work which is done well, is the best approach. Revising your learning work such as tables and spellings are just as important, also, as any written tasks.
This week, I am sharing some more tongue twisters. I hope that you have fun with these. Have a family challenge to see who can say them the fastest (while also saying them accurately of course!)
I am also adding a list of some common idioms. We use idioms in our everyday language, often without thinking about what they mean or where they come from. Have a look at a few of them. Think about and discuss what they mean, and try to come up with examples of when you might use them. Encourage your child to use one or two idioms which fit in real-life situations as they happen. This is the best way of generalising and remembering them.
Over the next few weeks, I will share a few ideas on how to develop some important language skills through the use of reading texts, cartoon strips or pictures. Whatever is available to you can be used quite readily.
This week, I would like to draw your attention to locating the main idea. You can help to develop your child’s skill in this area using a paragraph from the weekly unit in Reading Zone, a comic story, a paragraph from a book which your child is currently reading and enjoying, or, simply, a picture or photograph. Practise finding the main, or most important, idea in the piece of text or picture. One sentence of a response is all that is needed. If your child finds it difficult to boil down a paragraph or picture to just one sentence, you could model it for them. Listening to you picking out the main idea in some pieces of text will give them the confidence to try it out for themselves.
As always, don’t forget to check out all SEN teachers’ pages for a range of resources and approaches. We work collaboratively to ensure that there is variety in the suggested activities.
Kind regards
Rosaleen O Donovan
27/04/2020
Hello everyone.
I hope that you are all well.
This week, I will share a few ideas with you on how to develop rhyming skills. Rhyming skills are a very important aspect of language development, and are a prerequisite for literacy skills such as reading and spelling.
I am also including a list of tongue twisters which the family might like to try out at home. Tongue twisters are fun to use, and they also help with speech development, listening, and memory skills.
If you have not already visited the Twinkl site, you can still get free access, by going to http://www.twinkl.ie/offer, and entering the code CVDTWINKLHELPS. I would like to draw your attention to the resource 100 Commonly Misspelled Words, which can be downloaded from Twinkl. As the name suggests, these are the words, often short and seemingly simple, which catch people out in their everyday writing.
Rather than trying to learn all these words “off-by -heart”, a good idea is to select a few, and to have a look at them. Can you find little words within the word? An example of this is “use” in “because”. Notice the shape of the word. For example, how many tall and short letters can you see, and where in the word are they? Can you come up with any “trick” to help you remember the spelling of the word? I often find that the “trick” which the child comes up with themselves is usually more helpful than someone else’s “trick”.
Remember that spelling is a visual skill. Children improve their spelling skills by looking at words, playing with them, and writing them.
Rhyming Skills
1.Name two words. Do they rhyme? Yes or no ( thumbs up/ thumbs down). Pick one-syllable words to begin with. for example, “cat” and “fat”, “chair” and “fair”. The spelling of the words does not matter, only whether or not they rhyme . An example of this is “wait” and “mate”.
2.Say a word. Help your child to list as many words as they can which rhyme with that word. Again, the spelling does not matter. You can also play around with “nonsense” words here.
3.Odd-one-out. List 3 words, for example, “dog, fish, log”, and elicit the odd-one-out, that is to say, the word which doesn’t rhyme with the other two. You can increase the challenge by listing similar-sounding words, for example, “car,cat,fat”.
Have a look, also, at Mrs. O Sullivan’s class page, where she references a link to some nursery rhyme resources. Nursery rhymes are very valuable for developing and generalising rhyming skills.
Wishing you all the best for the week ahead,
Regards.
Rosaleen O Donovan
20/04/2020
Good morning everybody.
I hope you are all well and that you enjoyed the Easter break at home.
Today, I am attaching some simple but useful ideas on how to develop social maths skills at home. Social maths encompass our skills in measuring length, weight and capacity, reading and measuring time, and understanding and using money. These are important life skills, and they also help children to realise the importance of maths in “real life”.
I am also attaching a Covid 19 time capsule activity pack which some children may find interesting. The children of today will be remembering these strange times long into the future, so it might be interesting for them to keep a record of it.
As always, if you have any queries, I can be contacted on r.odonovan@upperglanmirens.ie.
Kind regards
Rosaleen O Donovan
2020 Covid-19 time capsule sheets.pdf
03/04/2020
Hello everybody.
I would like to wish you all a very happy Easter. I hope you all get to enjoy some fine weather, and some quality relaxation time with your families.
We will be in touch with you again after the Easter break.
Kind regards
Rosaleen O Donovan
Dear parents and children.
I hope that you are all well and doing your best to keep the bright side out!
The SEN team will be posting suggested activities to keep you busy over the coming weeks. Please ensure that you visit ALL SEN teacher’s pages, not just the page of your own SEN teacher. We are working collaboratively.
I have compiled a list of suggested activities to develop fine motor skills. All the activities are based on items easily sourced around the house. Have fun!
If you have any questions about the activities I can be contacted on r.odonovan@upperglanmirens.ie
Kind regards
Rosaleen O Donovan
24/03/2020
Good morning everyone.
I hope you all continue to keep safe and well.
I am attaching a short document which outlines the correct procedure for following the Toe by Toe programme.
Kind regards
Rosaleen O Donovan
Below are a few ideas to keep up your speech and language skills development.
1. sh sound hunt – look for items around the house which begin with the sh sound. Practise saying the words using your best sh sound.
Try this tongue twister: She sold six shabby sheared sheep on a ship
2.Categories Game – name two related items, for example, “car and truck” or “table and wardrobe”, and ask your child to tell you in what way they are related. The aim is that they will practise naming the category to which these items belong, for example, vehicles, furniture, food, fruit etc. You can extend this game by naming three items, for example, ” carrot, broccoli and apple”, and ask for the odd-one-out. The aim is that the child will say why the item is the odd-one-out, and name the category to which it belongs.
3.Animal Claps – name an animal and clap out/ count the number of syllables in it. Examples are, “cat”, one syllable, “monkey”, two syllables, “elephant”, three syllables. You can extend this by asking the child to think of an animal which has, for example, two syllables in its name.
30/03/2020
Hello parents and children.
I hope that you are all keeping safe and well, and that you got to enjoy some of the lovely weather we have had lately.
The SEN team are uploading some fun Easter-themed ideas for you this week. They cover a variety of skills, so there should be something within them to suit everyone.
Have fun with these Easter tongue twisters also!
Ellen’s exciting Easter basket included egg-cellent edible eggs
Each Easter, Eddie eats eighty Easter eggs
Don’t forget, if you would like to show me any photos of your creations or activities, you can send them to r.odonovan@upperglanmirens.ie
Kind regards
Rosaleen O Donovan
t-t-2546556–new-easter-dot-to-dot-activity-sheets_ver_2
T-T-9445-Bunny-Hop-Pencil-Control-Worksheets_ver_1 (1)
t-t-5015-design-an-easter-egg-a4-activity-sheet_ver_2
t-re-298-happy-easter-colouring-pages
t-c-254499-easter-themed-basket-craft_ver_1
t-c-254454-rabbit-2d-shape-activity-sheets_ver_3
FreeEasterandSpringCraftChicksinaBasket