Using magnetic letters that stick to a whiteboard, invite a student to the front of the class. Ask him to spell out a simple sentence using the letters clustered on the board. "Go to school," or "good kids do homework" are examples of simple sentences that may be used. If the student struggles to spell out the sentence, invite the rest of the class to help or give hints until the correct letters are reached. Once the sentence is completely spelled on the whiteboard, ask the students to sound out each syllable or segment of the word. Ask them to blend the sounds until they speak the entire sentence. If magnetic letters are not available, use whiteboard markers.
Segmentation cheers break apart a sentence into syllabic pieces, which is then blended together by the whole class until the word or phrase is repeated. Use a catchy phrase to begin the game, such as: "Listen to what I say with your ears, then repeat the sounds you hear." Choose a sentence appropriate for your class level, write it on the whiteboard and start the cheer and repeat the sentence three times with exuberance as if you were a cheerleader. Beginner classes will focus on sentences that contain words with one syllable, while more advanced classes will work on sentences with two, three and four syllable words. Beginning word examples include: "fun," "sun," "bun" or "drum." More advanced words examples are "apple," "pizza," "blueberry" or "strawberry." After the cheer, using the whiteboard as a guide, point to each segmented syllable as students sound out the words and ultimately sentence as a whole. If using the sentence, "School is fun," first the "s" sound would be spoken, followed by the hard "k," followed by the long "oo" and completed with "l" sound. You would then move to the next word in the sentence written on the whiteboard.. You can even invite students up to, write out their own sentences and lead the cheer.
This activity combines an art project with a lesson in segmenting sentences. For the first part of class, provide each student with brown paper bags, markers and crayons. Ask them to draw a face on the paper bag and make their own hand puppet. If more time is allotted, they may use other materials such as yarn, buttons and glitter, which must be glued on. Invite the class to sit in a circle in front of the whiteboard. Write a sentence on the board and ask your class to speak the sentence allowed while opening and closing the mouths of their hand puppets for each segmented syllable.
This game adds a little movement and allows the students to burn energy while learning. Place 10 to 15 lines of tape on the floor about 10 inches apart. Ask the students to stand behind the very first line while you write a sentence on the whiteboard. Working together as a class, sound out the segmented syllables in the sentence. With each syllable, students should jump over the line in front of them. So a sentence with 10 syllables means the students will jump 10 times. Once they get to the end, invite the class to say the entire sentence aloud before starting back at the first line and writing a new sentence on the whiteboard.