Sounds, Letters and First Words
Primary 2 · English
Sounds, Letters and First Words
Lesson 3 of 3
13 min
Uwase must go and fetch water. Her brother is still outside.
So she writes him a note and leaves it on the table: The pot is on the mat.
Six words. One whole idea. That is a sentence — and today you will read them and write them.
Look closely at what Uwase wrote.
The pot is on the mat.
Three things are true about it:
The capital letter shouts "start here!". The full stop says "stop now, the idea is finished".
A sentence also tells you one whole thing. "The pot" is not a sentence. "The pot is on the mat." is, because now you know what the pot is doing.
Here is a new one: The hen sat on my bag.
Step 1 — read each word on its own.
The — a sight word, you just know it.
hen — blend it: h-e-n.
sat — blend it: s-a-t.
on — blend it: o-n.
my — a sight word.
bag — blend it: b-a-g.
Step 2 — read the whole line again, smoothly, the way you talk to a friend: The hen sat on my bag.
Step 3 — ask yourself what happened. A hen sat on somebody's bag! You understood it. That is real reading.
Gatete copied a sentence in a hurry. He wrote:
the dog is big
Two things are wrong. Can you see them?
The first letter should be a capital T, not a small t. And there is no full stop at the end.
Fixed: The dog is big. Now it is a proper sentence.
When you copy a sentence into your book, copy everything:
Then read your copy back out loud. If it says the same thing, you did it well.
Tip
Big letter to start. Little dot to stop
Check the front. Check the end. Every sentence, every time — and you will never lose a mark for it again.
Read this out loud: My pen is in the tin. Which words did you not have to blend?
Fix this sentence: keza has a red hat
Fix this sentence: the cat sat on the mat
Put these words in order to make a sentence: is My big bag.
How many words are in this sentence: The hen is in the bin.
My, is and the are sight words — you already know them. You blend pen and tin.
Keza has a red hat. A capital K, because it starts the sentence and it is also a name. Then a full stop.
The cat sat on the mat. Capital T at the front, full stop at the end.
My bag is big. The capital M shows you which word goes first.
Six. Count them: The / hen / is / in / the / bin.
What you learned today
Quick check
Which one is a sentence?
