Fun practice for Pre-A1 Starters Reading and Writing Part 3

Inspired by a request from a teacher for more resources to practise for Pre-A1 Starters Reading and Writing Part 3, I decided to write a post with some hands-on activities.

I suggest using ready-made resources from Cambridge. For example, The Starters flashcards, available to download from the Cambridge website.

Here is a page of animals from that document. *In Pre-A1 Starters Reading and Writing Part 3, the pictures and words always come from the same topic.

Cut up the page, so that you have the individual flashcards.

Tips

Laminate the sheets before you cut them up, then they will last longer.

Round off the corners, so that they’re not sharp.

And then, make some letter cards, or perhaps, like me, you have sets of letters that you’ve either bought or made.

In bigger groups, learners work in groups, with a set of letters for each group. *For most words they will need at least 2 of each of the most common letters.

To build up to the Pre-A1 Starters Reading and Writing Part 3 task:

1. Ask learners to put all the letters in the set in alphabetical order.
2. Give them an animal flashcard and ask them to take letters and spell the word.
3. Do this with 5 animals.

4. Ask learners to look at the five words and tell you if they are in order, from the shortest to the longest. (No) Tell them to put the pictures and the words for the longest words (lizard and monkey) at the end. *In the Pre-A1 Starters Test in Reading and Writing Part 3, the words appear from the shortest word to the longest word.

5. Show learners how, in Starters Reading and Writing Part 3, Cambridge jumbles up the letters. *And they are not shown in a straight line.
6. Learners move the letters to spell the words.
7. Repeat with the remaining animal flashcards and letters.

8. When you do this activity again, choose a different topic.
9. You can move on to learners challenging each other with different flashcards, giving their classmates the letters they need to spell the word, but jumbled up.

I hope this post helps you and your learners and that you have a lot of fun with my suggestions!