Writing long and short sticks

In this session the learners/children practices drawing long and short sticks in a grid of large blocks. They make use of their previously learned knowledge of blocks as letters spaces and left to right progression of writing in a grid. 

The stick letters

stick-letters.jpg

You will need

A writing surface with a large block grid and a marker. 
An example sheet showing short and long sticks 
An example sheet showing stick letters 

Instructions

1  Use the example sheet to show the learners examples of long and short sticks.

  • Talk about the start and end positions for short and long  sticks. Emphasize that the sticks are positioned on the left hand side of the letter space. 

long and short sticks_0.jpg

2  Use the stick letter example sheet and let the learners identify the long and the short sticks.

  • Also talk about the position of an l and an i which are stick letters all by themselves and sit bang in the middle of the letter space. 

stick letters in blocks.jpg

3  Demonstrate how you write a short sticks in a large block grid, one stick in each block.

  •  Emphasize the start and finish position and also make sure the learners understand that sticks are always written with a top-to-bottom movement. 

4  Instruct the the learners practice writing long sticks in the first rows of blocks on their writing surface.

  •  Pause to talk about the learners' efforts, and then do another block of short sticks.  Follow this with writing long sticks in the next two rows, always stopping to do a quality check after each row is completed. 

5  Remind the learners to move the page upwards after the first two rows are completed. 

6  Remember to check that the learners' movements.

  •  Are using shoulder movements to write the strokes, are keeping a steady wrist with the end pointing past the shoulder of the writing arm. 

7 Finish the lesson with a drawing or writing activity

  • Include writing/drawing short and long sticks in all directions in a large block grid.  

8  Also show the learners how they can make patterns of long and short sticks

  • This can be done in a grid or on on a sheet of paper marked with single lines. 

These drawing activities provide the learners with an opportunity to practice drawing short lines with attention to the start and end positions, as well as adapting their drawing actions to fit into a demarcated space. 

 R 2-04 stick capital letters.jpg    long and short sticks.jpg