My district has not purchased a new reading program in many years. So I am faced with the challenge of implementing the Common Core while using the Open Court Reading program in my classroom. Over the years I have worked hard to make this program effective but now I have some new knowledge and will change it to reflect best teaching practices.
The Letter-Sound cards used in this program are quite large and I will not have the wall space necessary to hang them up. What's a teacher to do? Make them smaller and a little bit cuter! I am so happy with the results and decided to give them away as my first BTS Freebie. Does that make you jump up and down?
These cards can be hung up in rows but need to be visible to your students as you refer to them. The best case scenario is to hang them where your students can reach them and use them as an anchor when sounding out words. Some of you might prefer punching 2 holes in each card and stringing them into a banner using brightly, colored ribbon. I would break them up into a few rows if you decide to do this. Cute, right?
You might want to make more than one set of these cards and let students use them in literacy centers. If you are interested in having this freebie you can download it here or click on either picture to access it.
Here are just a few ideas for using these cards:
1. Hand them out to students at your opening. Start singing the chant for these cards and as you sing about each letter the child holding it pops up to show their card. ( Thanks Meredith for this fantastic idea.)
2. Place them within the reach of your students and let your child of the day point to each card as you go through the alphabet.
3. Use these cards for phonemic awareness games recommended in your manual.
4. Hand out the cards and have students line up in alphabetical order.
Make these interactive and students will stay much more engaged!
Stay posted and look for other OCR freebies as we head back to school. If you download these I would really like you to leave a comment and follow me. I hope this helps any new teachers who are getting their classroom ready
11 comments:
Thank you these are adorable. I appreciate your effort and sharing this with us all!
Thank you so much! We do Imaginet in our building and I follow most of the curriculum ideas. I feel as if there are many holes, so we supplement with Michael Heggarty! Thanks so much for making these so much cuter!
Thanks, they are gorgeous!
They are so cute....whether you use Open Court or not. Thanks for sharing!!
Terri Izatt
KinderKapers
Thank you! I like the way the letters are correctly formed on writing lines - I might just make a second set, laminate, and let the children trace the letters with dry erase markers.
Fran, you have made my day! Like you, my district has been using OCR forever. I was really dreading hanging up my very old OCR alphabet cards for the new school year. So thrilled with your creation! Thank you for sharing!
You have just made the OC curriculum come to life. The teachers and the kids are going to love using these. Polka dots, letters with lines , shadowing behind the pictures and fun dotted outlines. These are FANTASTIC!! THANK YOU SO MUCH!
Thank you, Fran. I'm in the same boat as you. A couple years back I cut off all the extra white space at the bottom of the long cards.
You are a genius! The cards are adorable. I agree with you that the Open Court cards took up way too much wall space. I will enjoy using these so much more. Thank you for creating these cards and for sharing them with us.
Is it possible for someone to share the chants for the cards you referred to?
Fran! I always hate the large amount of space those cards take up! Thank you SO MUCH for these!
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