 Hi, today I'm going to talk about a phonemic awareness activity I do with my students. We are talking about identifying words in a sentence. So the importance of this is that they can hear and then repeat to you how many words are in a sentence. And so I talked to the kids about we use words to make sentences and it's important to know how many words are in a sentence, especially when you start writing. So on my table I have five manipulatives and each one represents a word. So I might tell the kids I'm going to say a sentence like I have a cat. And when I say my sentence, each word I say I'm going to move my counter, okay? So I'm going to start on the side that I read. So that's another thing. If you read left to right, we're going to start on the left side. That's the first one we're going to move. So my sentence is I have a cat. So watch Mrs. Ocero. I have a cat. I moved four counters. I have a cat. That means there's four words in my sentence. And then we'll start it again. So this is a whole group activity or a small group activity. We'll move our counters back up and I'll say let's think of another sentence. My dog is brown. So each time I say a word I'm going to move my counter. Ready? My dog is brown. And then we're going to ask the kids how many counters did we move? One, two, three, four. We moved four counters. That means there's four words in a sentence. A couple of other things you can do is vary the number of counters. So you might start with three word sentences and take these off so that your kids can feel a little more successful. So I like you. Let's count them. I like you. How many counters did you pull down? Three. That means there's three words in a sentence. And then you can increase it for difficulty. You can also increase it for assessment. So then when you're working in a small group with a child give them different sentence lengths and then have them pull down a counter. So for example I'd say my sentence is I can dance. So I'd say I'm going to say it first. I can dance. Now you say it and they're going to repeat it. I can dance. Now while you say it again the second time I want you to pull the counters down each time you say a word pull a counter. So then they'll say the sentence again I can dance. And then you can ask them how many counters did you pull down? Three. How many words are in a sentence? Three. How do you know that there's three words in a sentence? Because I pulled down three counters. So that just lets you know how successful they are with identifying words in a sentence. Thanks.