Listen, sing, rhyme

A child who cannot yet write focusses its attention mainly on the meaning of the words; it does not yet consciously perceive the sound or the formal features. Only gradually does the child discover that it can break down spoken language into words, syllables and letters and use these as building blocks for its own writing. This learning process begins long before the first letter is written, when rhymes and songs awaken an interest in the structure of language or when attention is drawn to the sound-writing relationship when reading aloud.

«I see something you don't see ... »

As a variation of the popular train/car driving game, the first letter of the thing you are looking for is given instead of the colour («... and it starts with S»).

Syllable levels

At the bottom of a staircase, the children think of a word, say the word and go up one step for each syllable. Who can get up the stairs the fastest?

Song case

Songs are depicted on slips of paper with matching keywords and drawings and collected in a box. Now a slip of paper is drawn in turn, the song title is guessed - and sung!

(Pre)reading

In this way, listeners gradually become self-readers: listeners correct words that were «accidentally» mixed up when reading aloud (« ... had big sausage») or look for a word on the book page that appears more often in the text («Where does it say ... ?»).
Picture: iStock

Which songs do these verses come from?
1. the bowlis in the water, the tail is in the height

2. there has to be someone who cantalk- then everything is close to me
(in the video from minute 10:30)

3. stay thereall day so that I can go out

4. are you ready? Can you go to both sites?
(without video)

5. everyone grunts, everyone smacks their lips, andeveryone scratches their backs

About the author:
Johanna Oeschger is a literature and linguistics scholar, teaches German and English at upper secondary level and works as a media didactician at LerNetz.