Pre-Entry Resources

Three sets of dominoes to use in warm-up and for letter and word recognition activities. The first set, for pre-Entry ESOL and Literacy learners with very low levels of letter and word recognition, matches lower case to capital letter versions, the second set is a set of “doubles”, which can be used alongside the first. The third set, for pre-Entry / Entry 1 ESOL learners, matches a category to an example. Each set has 17 dominoes, so 4 each for a group of 4 learners, plus one to start.

A straightforward worksheet with pictures of classroom objects and a choice of letters to circle. Ideal as a quick warm-up.

Write or match the correct word under each picture.
Milk, bread, oil, tea, eggs, potatoes, bananas, and biscuits.

A counting game along similar lines to Snakes and Ladders. Learners will learn turn-taking, following instruction & basic counting skills. In addition, they will pick up social and communication skills along the way.

(Print onto A3 – a dice and counters needed)

Editor’s note
A PPT version is also included to enable the game to be played on a smartboard.

This resource helps learners hear rhymes and recognise corresponding letters/digraphs, rimes and onsets etc. Take simple limericks and poems and get your learners to put them together.

I created my own limericks to match work we had been doing on long vowel sounds (it is not that difficult to do once you get started). Well-known poems and nursery rhymes also proved particularly popular as many knew them already by heart from childhood and some were doing them now with their children.

Big letters reading game is a board game that provides practice reading individual letter sounds and common phonemes such as ch, sh, & th. Best laminated – you will need a die and counters.

A Simple and straightforward 16 piece jigsaw that makes a great group activity. Cardinal and ordinal numbers are matched with number words to form a triangle. This puzzle constructs sequentially, i.e. the word ‘one’ is at the triangle’s apex, matching with 1, then two, underneath it and so on up to 10 in cardinals and 8th in ordinals (this makes it a lot easier for preEntry learners to see how the triangle is constructed).