Ideas and tips to start the new school year
When I Grow Up: a new tablet activity for Early Years and KS1
Spark your pupils’ imagination with When I Grow Up - a simple activity for children to practise writing their names. Children can write their name and choose a colourful character ... maybe a footballer or a chef? Next, they can write over their name and title on IWBs and tablets and print an A4 poster to display in the classroom or to take home to show family and friends.
The poster includes a traceable sentence for real handwriting practice.
Find under the ‘Fun’ menu. Posters will be displayed in your chosen letterforms and class font.
New worksheets for KS1 common exception words
Letter-join has created a set of trace and copy worksheets which are perfect for introducing your learners to common exception words in Year 1 and 2. Use this helpful resource to support your pupils in learning to spell these tricky words so they can form simple sentences and improve their reading fluency.
The worksheets have been designed in a useful format for left-handed learners and are available in your chosen class font.
Letter-join Hundred Square
Letter-join’s Hundred Square - a 10 x 10 number grid available in two useful sizes:
• Laminate the A5 hundred square for each table in your class for reference when completing maths tasks.
• The A4 version can be displayed on the IWB or printed out so children can colour or circle numbers as required.
This resource can help children with a variety of maths concepts and can be printed out in your preferred option for the number 2.
AUTUMN RESOURCES
Early Years activities
1. Why not make an eye-catching title for an autumn display in your classroom using Letter-join’s large outline letters.
Print out the word ‘autumn’ using the outline letters.
Find these by typing ‘outline’ into the search bar.
Children can follow the path of each letter using sensory materials, like autumn leaves, to help familiarise them with the letter shapes.
2. Magic Patterns a great activity for your learners to practise their fine motor skills by tracing pre-writing patterns, simple picture outlines and puzzles.
Try Letter-join’s new Seasonal background in Magic Words to practise letter formation with autumn words.
3. Phonics Phase 1
Children can develop their speaking and listening skills with Letter-join’s Phonics Phase 1 activity. Tune in to their awareness of the sounds of familiar objects and explore a variety of sounds in the environment.
SoundMatch is an engaging matching pairs game for Early Years designed to support Letter-join’s Phase 1 Phonics activities.
Key Stage One activities
Letter-join’s wide range of resources are great for enhancing seasonal handwriting activities.
1. Children can practise letter formation with Magic Words:
• Type in a word.
• Choose a from a selection of colourful backgrounds.
• Trace neatly over the word.
• Listen to fun sounds.
2. Strengthen phonics learning with Letter-join Phonics
Have fun exploring Letter-join’s Phonics resource - designed to support your school’s validated phonics programme as a fun extension to your pupils’ phonics learning.
Children will love these engaging games, activities and worksheets linking the phonemes and graphemes in phases 2 to 5 with handwriting practice.
3. Create a seasonal Word Bank for your class to enrich their vocabulary.
Select ‘More resources’ to make a Trace and Copy Spelling list or a Word Search using these words.
Key Stage Two activities
1. Introduce some seasonal ‘WOW’ words with this Letter-join Word of the Week template. Try a whole class brainstorm for autumnal word suggestions. Here’s a few to get you started: bountiful, deciduous, abundant, earthy…
2. Drawing with words
Your pupils can have fun refining their cursive handwriting with an autumn-themed activity using Letter-join’s templates or creating their own simple outlines.
3. Have a go at producing a seasonal handwriting task for your pupils using the Letter-join Online Word Processor.
Letter-join’s seasonal activities for autumn
Type ‘seasonal’ into the search bar to locate Letter-join’s selection of autumn handwriting activities for each key stage.
Letter-join’s Halloween and Bonfire Night resources include a range of worksheets and activities for handwriting practice in your chosen class font.
When I Grow Up is an engaging new handwriting activity from Letter-join for Early Years and Key Stage 1. Children will have great fun making their own colourful posters for display in the classroom or to take home to show family and friends.
Children can easily follow these simple steps to produce a poster to be proud of!
• Select When I Grow Up from the Letter-join Fun section to start.
• Children can type their name into the box and trace over it.
• Choose the speaker icon to listen to the name of each job, then the tick symbol to select one.
• Scroll through the pictures and ‘tick’ the one you like.
• Neatly trace over the name of the chosen job.
• Select the ‘printer’ icon to print a poster.
• Now trace neatly over the sentence for real handwriting practice.
As with all Letter-join activities the When I Grow Up posters will be displayed in your chosen letterforms and class font.
The Letter-join Online Word Processor included in your Letter-join subscription is the perfect alternative!
The Online Word Processor can be found under the Resources tab. Any of the Letter-join fonts can be selected and your school’s alternative letters for f, k, w, x and z will be automatically used.
Watch this video to see how to easily create documents and worksheets.
Every school that subscribes to Letter-join has a free Pupil log-in for their children to use.
Letter-join school subscriptions include lots of great handwriting activities for pupils to enjoy at home as well as at school, using the same letterforms which have been selected by your school.
Find out where your school’s Pupil log-in details are and print out a letter to send home to parents explaining how to log in. Children can log in to Letter-join on their PCs and tablets, at home as well as at school.
Watch Letter-join’s how-to videos to help ensure that teachers, pupils and parents are set up for learning cursive handwriting at school and at home.
Video instructions for class teachers >
Video instructions for parents >
Class teachers can set home learning tasks and create word banks of animated words specifically for the pupils in their class. These will be created in the font that the teachers have chosen to use for their class.
