End of the year skills

The end of the school year in my classroom often means that many of my students are ready for activities that challenge them and introduce higher level skills.  This is my favorite time of the year because they finally begin to understand why we have been doing all of this letter work for the last two or three years, the idea that letter sounds can blend together and create words, words that they can read all by themselves, is incredible to them. I love to see the sense of pride on their faces when they are able to read simple words after blending all of the individual sounds, so I try to give them tons of opportunities that I know will allow them to be successful. 

We’ve been working on CVC words. most of my students who are able to do these are not confident enough to complete these activities on their own, so I’ve been doing tons of one-on-one instruction.  I’ve been switching back and forth between two great products, both of which I developed to make sure that working on these skills is fun for my students. I want them to enjoy reading, and be confident in their abilities. 

The first is my CVC Word Family Paint Chips.  These are so fun, and they totally speak to the way that my mind is organized, I mean, they’re color-coded for goodness sakes. 

You cut out each word family paint chip, making sure to cut out the white square in the first section of each chip. Then you cut out each letter strip. The letter strips are the same color as the word family paint chip that they work with, this way, you can put out all of the short a word families and your students will easily be able to tell which letter strips go with which word family strip. Each letter strip also has the corresponding word family labeled on the bottom of the strip, this is purely for teacher sanity, if you drop the entire stack on the floor, you will still be able to get the right letter strips matched up with the right word family strip. 

To use them with your students, place the letter strip behind the paint chip, with one letter showing through the square cut-out. After students sound out and read one word, they can slide the letter strip to reveal a new letter, and a new word.