Foundation

At the beginning of formal schooling, students start at different levels based on their formal and informal prior educational experiences. Foundation students are considered beginning writers. To cater to all students, writing lessons are carefully scaffolded for student success. Lessons in Foundation are divided into three exercises: ‘Speak and Make’, ‘Make and Trace’ and ‘Write’. Each exercise is designed to be twenty minutes in length.  

Speak and Make 

The purpose of the ‘Speak and Make’ exercise is to develop the skill of sentence making by saying the sentence out loud and moving word cards to form the sentence. The word cards are colour coded to help students to easily identify parts of speech.  

You will learn more about using the coloured cards for Foundation classes in Section B, Lesson 3 of this professional learning module. 

Make and Trace

The purpose of the ‘Make and Trace’ exercise is to develop the skill of sentence making by moving word cards to form the sentence. Students trace the sentence in their workbook to practise letter formation, punctuation and spacing between words. This is modelled by the teacher, using the terminology that students are familiar with in their handwriting program.

Write 

The purpose of the ‘Write’ exercise is to provide an opportunity to practise tracing and writing the sentence. Students trace the sentence in their workbook to practise letter formation, punctuation and spacing between words. Students then repeat the sentence, by writing independently onto the red and blue handwriting lines provided in their workbook.