Saying where something is

I can put the snail where the words tell me.

A position word is an instruction. If you have understood it, your hand goes to one place and not to any other.

The child says the position word out loud before letting go of the counter, and the counter is where the sentence put it.

First lesson. Put a counter behind a box without saying anything, and ask the class to tell a child who had their eyes shut where it is. Let the answer be pointing, and say that today the words will have to do it.

Albert and Leo show a snail what a trick is, and every trick they pick is a place: in one end of the log and out the other, on top of the pine cones and then at the bottom.

Pairs set five models along a tray and name them, then move a snail counter to the place each read sentence names, saying the position word aloud before they let go. They swap jobs so that one child names a place from a card and the other moves the counter to it.

A tray whose five things have each been visited, and ten places reached with the word said aloud at every one.

Each pair moves the counter through all ten places in the book's own order, saying the position word at every stop and both words at a thing before travelling on.

I can find the other place at the same thing.

Position words come in pairs at one thing. Knowing under is not finished until you can say over the top of the same branch.

The child hands over the partner card for any place without touching the tray, and names the thing as well as the word.

Yesterday the counter went to ten places. Ask how many things there were, get five, and ask why ten places needed only five things.

Nothing in this yard is visited once. The book says both halves every time — on the sunflower and off it, behind the rock and in front of it — first in the yard and again next morning when the slime is read.

Pairs lay ten place cards beside the things they belong to, hunt out the five matched pairs, and put two counters at once on one model so that under the twig and over the top of it are both occupied while both words are said aloud.

Five matched sets of cards, each with two counters placed at its thing, and a spoken count of how many sets there were.

With the tray covered, the teacher reads one card and each child says the words for the other place at the same thing, naming the thing too.

I can say where the bone is so my partner can go straight to it.

A sentence about a place is right or wrong in a way anybody can check: the person you said it to either arrives or does not.

The child's one sentence sends a partner to the bone without a second guess, and the sentence names a word from the chart and a thing in the yard.

Up to now the sentence has come from a card. Today the child makes it. Hide a bone while everyone watches and ask for the sentence rather than a finger.

Bingo buries every bone somewhere and then cannot say where, so the book hands the reader eight words for it, printed in one line at the back.

Groups of four build a yard corner on the carpet and watch one child walk a bone to a hiding place in silence. Each child then says one whole sentence in the form the bone is ___ the ___, and the child who hid it says yes or no.

A sentence from every child that the hider accepted, and one successful walk to a partner's bone from the words alone.

Each child closes their eyes while a partner moves the bone, then listens to one sentence and walks straight to it. A wrong landing is worked out together: which word sent you wrong?

I can say what the word is measured from, and how many things it needs.

A position word with nothing after it sends nobody anywhere. Under needs one thing; between needs two, and both have to be said.

The child sorts the chart words into a one-landmark pile and a two-landmark pile and can say why any word is where they put it.

Yesterday a partner sometimes went to the wrong place. Say only behind, and wait. Let the class find that nobody can move.

The book describes one buried bone twice over, once as between the tree and a rock and once as to the right of the apple tree, which shows that the word is never about the bone alone.

Children try to obey a position word said with nothing after it, then put a landmark card down for every thing a word needs before it can send anybody anywhere, sorting the eight chart words into a one-card pile and a two-card pile.

Two piles of words with the landmark cards that justify them, and one bone described two true ways that both send a partner to the same patch of carpet.

A partner says a between sentence and then leaves one of its two things out. The child tries to find the bone, cannot, and says which card would put it back.

I can put a mark on the map where the bone is, and read somebody else's mark back into the room.

The drawing has to stand for the room. A mark in the wrong corner of the paper sends a child to the wrong corner of the carpet, and everybody can see it.

The child's mark is in the corner of the map that matches the corner of the carpet, and they can say the position sentence their own mark stands for.

Sentences have done all the work so far, and they vanish. Ask what you could leave on the table so that somebody coming in tomorrow would still know.

Jill's dog cannot remember where he buried anything, so she draws the backyard on a sheet of paper and marks the drawing wherever a bone goes down.

Standing at one edge of the yard corner, children point at each of four things on the carpet and then at the same four on the paper. They watch a bone go down, put one red mark on their own map at the matching place, and say the position sentence aloud as they draw.

A marked map from every child, and one walk to a partner's mark made without looking at where the bone really is.

The teacher marks the big paper in the wrong corner on purpose. Children walk to where it says, find nothing, and say which landmark the mark sits beside and which one the bone sits beside.

I can say the word for the way something moved while it is still moving.

Some words name a place and some name a path. Through and around can use the same tube and mean two different journeys.

The child says the direction word while the mouse is still moving, and can make a new move of their own that the same word fits.

Every word so far has answered where is it. Walk a mouse up a card hill and ask where it is; take the answer, then ask what it just did.

Every ride in this book moves one way, and the book prints one word for that way on a page of its own.

Pairs walk a mouse up a folded card hill and down the far side, saying up and down while it moves, then race the page by holding up the word card before the teacher reads it. Each pair then invents a move nobody in the book made that their own word still fits.

Seven direction words used while something moved, and one invented move the rest of the class named correctly.

Two moves are made with the same tube: in one end and out the other, and staying outside and circling it. Children say which one is through, and run a finger along both to say what the finger has to do differently.

I can draw the path and show which way it goes.

A move is gone the moment it stops. A line with a starting dot and an arrowhead keeps it, and a stranger can run it the right way round.

Another pair runs the child's path the right way from the dot and the arrowhead alone, and names the word for it without being told which ride it was.

Yesterday's moves were gone as soon as they finished. Ask how you could leave one on the paper the way lesson 5 left a place.

The book's rides are paths: a hill up one side and down the other, a carousel that comes back to where it started.

Children trace five drawn paths with one finger, saying the words while the finger moves, then draw the hill and the loop on their own paper as one unbroken line each, marking where each path starts.

Four drawn paths, each with a starting dot and one arrowhead, read correctly by another pair.

Pairs swap papers, put a finger on the other pair's starting dot, run it the way the arrow points and say the word for that path. A path whose start cannot be found goes back to be marked more clearly.