The Snail And The Whale

Well, one of our favourite projects of the last term was learning all about the long a sound. We used Julia Donaldson's The Snail And The Whale to help us get creative, an idea inspired once again by Belair.

We did lots of activities to sort words into ai, a_e and ay categories. Then we made our Snail and the Whale display, adding words everyday or so to the correct group. We also sang the corresponding Jolly Phonics songs; picked out long a words in stories; created whales in Art; compared long a and short a words, sorting them into groups; read sentences with long a words and then wrote our own using words that we had collected throughout the week or brainstormed as a whole class.

This project would also link well to any topics on the seaside, journeys and non-fiction (information about whales).