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iPhone Screenshots

Word Wagon takes kids on a reading journey! Through fun activities, kids will learn reading fundamentals like letters, phonics, sight words, spelling, and more!

Word Wagon is a fun, award-winning app teaching letters, phonics and spelling. Based on Common Core State Standards kids will learn letter names, sounds and spelling of 4 and 6 letter words. AGES: 2-6.

OVERVIEW
4 Levels for Preschool, Kindergarten and First Grade:
- Level 1: Letters - learn the names of the letters
- Level 2: Phonics - learn the sounds of the letters
- Level 3: Spelling I - spell words up to four letters
- Level 4: Spelling II - spell words up to six letters

CATEGORY: Curriculum

ACTIVITIES
- LEARN letters, words and phonics
- PLAY with Mozzarella the Mouse and his best friend Coco the bird
- COLLECT stickers. Earn colorful stickers for each word in a sticker book. Touch the animated stickers to hear funny sounds.
- EARN stars. Use the stars to make different constellations, which are shaped like animals.
Mozzarella the mouse will dress up as an astronaut and float in space!
- DISCOVER interactive surprises like playing hide and seek, dressing up as a ghost and drawing pictures with Mozzarella the Mouse and Coco

AWARDS
- Parents' Choice Gold Award - Parents' Choice Foundation
- Children's Technology Review Editor's Choice Award for Excellence in Design

ABOUT DUCK DUCK MOOSE
(A wholly-owned subsidiary of Khan Academy)
Duck Duck Moose, an award-winning creator of educational mobile apps for families, is a passionate team of engineers, artists, designers, and educators. Founded in 2008, the company has created 21 top-selling titles and has received 21 Parents' Choice Awards, 18 Children's Technology Review Awards, 12 Tech with Kids' Best Pick App Awards, and a KAPi award for "Best Children's App" at the International Consumer Electronics Show.

Khan Academy is a nonprofit with a mission to provide a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere. Duck Duck Moose is now part of the Khan Academy family. Like all Khan Academy offerings, all Duck Duck Moose apps are now free, without ads or subscriptions. We rely on our community of volunteers and donors. Get involved today at www.duckduckmoose.com/about.

Check out the Khan Academy app to learn and practice all kinds of topics for elementary school through college and beyond.

We'd love to hear from you! Visit us at www.duckduckmoose.com or drop us a line at support@duckduckmoose.com.

Thanks for learning with us! We have some big news!

We've launched a new learning app for kids 2-7 called Khan Academy Kids. It's 100% FREE with no ads or subscriptions needed.

This new version of Word Wagon includes some minor changes. Please update today!

Pretty Impressed

I'm pretty impressed with this app. It has different levels so the app grows with the child. One of my frustrations in finding educational apps is that they are too basic for my son, or too advanced. I want to be pushing him and making him try things he doesn't fully know, but don't want to utterly frustrate him. That's a fine line, and this app allows you and your child to find that line. My son is 4, and this app is perfect for him.

Play & Learn

My 3 year old loves spelling words (level III) and receiving the golden stars after building his list. It's easy for him to navigate through all the features. This app makes it feel more like play than learning to him. I definitely recommend this app to others.

Great game for spelling/phonics

My four year old son loves to play Word Wagon. He has learned to spell many new words while having fun doing it.

The developer, Duck Duck Moose LLC, has not provided details about its privacy practices and handling of data to Apple. For more information, see the developer's privacy policy.

No Details Provided

The developer will be required to provide privacy details when they submit their next app update.

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‎Word Wagon is a fun, award-winning app teaching letters, phonics and spelling. Based on Common Core State Standards kids will learn letter names, sounds and spelling of 4 and 6 letter words. AGES: 2-6. OVERVIEW 4 Levels for Preschool, Kindergarten and First Grade: - Level 1: Letters - learn the na...

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*** Winner of an Apple Design Award ***

Metamorphabet is a playful, interactive alphabet for all ages. Poke, prod, drag, and spin each of the 26 letters of the alphabet to reveal surprising and luminous transformations.

* Easy-to-use interface
* Responsive, organic, toy-like design
* Kids are invited to explore the alphabet and expand their vocabulary
* Adults will be engaged by the fluid, rich interactions and beautifully crafted universe

Metamorphabet contains NO in-app purchases.

If you have any questions or problems with Metamorphabet, please follow the support link on this page. We are happy to help!

"Metamorphabet is the best interactive toy for iPad and iPhone ever." - Amanita Design, creators of Samorost

"A Best App of 2016" - The American Association of School Librarians

"The first video game I'll let my four-year-old kid play all by herself."
- Kotaku

"Metamorphabet might just be the perfect introduction to touchscreens... Unlike most educational games, it's more playful than instructive, more of a toy than a textbook."
- Verge

"The presentation is just lovely, and its laid back structure might just make it one to consider if you've a young one eager to start playing on the iPad."
- AppSpy

"An odd and playful little toy that you'll keep tapping, touching, and twisting."
- Pocket Gamer

"I was surprised at just how easy it was for my son to play with this app. He immediately took to it."
- The Dadcade

"My favorite letter was B!"
- Sidney, age 7

Metadata update. (The app itself hasn't changed.)

Editors' Notes

See the beauty and power of ABCs in an app where every letter holds secret words. Touch an F, and it sprouts a foot, then feathers, then a fan; a G becomes a guitar in a garden with ghosts. Kids will love poking and prodding their way to the end of the alphabet, while parents will dig the unpredictability and gorgeous animation in this Apple Design Award winner.

Great ABC Learning App

Beautiful, engaging design. My 22 month old, and my 4 year old, both enjoy it.

This is a certified hood classic

This is a W puzzle app [no pun intended] | old: I just want to get this wawawa I'm sad wawawa

The developer, Vectorpark, has not provided details about its privacy practices and handling of data to Apple. For more information, see the developer's privacy policy.

No Details Provided

The developer will be required to provide privacy details when they submit their next app update.

Information

Compatibility

iPhone

Requires iOS 8.0 or later.

iPad

Requires iPadOS 8.0 or later.

iPod touch

Requires iOS 8.0 or later.

Age Rating

4+, Made for Ages 6-8

Family Sharing

Up to six family members can use this app with Family Sharing enabled.

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‎*** Winner of an Apple Design Award *** Metamorphabet is a playful, interactive alphabet for all ages. Poke, prod, drag, and spin each of the 26 letters of the alphabet to reveal surprising and luminous transformations. * Easy-to-use interface * Responsive, organic, toy-like design * Kids are in...

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** 2019 Honor Recipient of the Association for Library Service to Children's Excellence in Early Learning Digital Media Award **

** 2019 Special Mention for Education in the BolognaRagazzi Digital Award **

"Explore Lexi's World, an enchanting app that provides a gentle introduction to letters, words, animals, and actions. The playful landscape allows young children and caregivers ample opportunities for rich interaction with each other. Surprises abound as children bring words to life and reveal discoveries about cause and effect." - http://www.ala.org/alsc/welcome-excellence-early-learning-digital-media-award-home-page

"For a young child, cracking the reading code can be hard work. This app bridges the distance between letters and meaning by turning letters into living building blocks. As a child types, she builds items that appear on the screen." - http://www.bolognachildrensbookfair.com/en/bologna-childrens-book-fair-awards/bolognaragazzi-digital-award/2019-winners/2019-mentions/7174.html

In Lexi's World, words are magic spells that bring their meanings to life.

Lexi lives on a tiny planet. Using a special keyboard that only allows words that exist to be entered, children can add animals and food to the world. Type "bunny" and a small bunny appears. Type "carrot" so Lexi can feed the bunny.

This is a gentle experience that encourages exploration through a simple world-building mechanism and does not have any reward loops. You can't collect stars to buy a new outfit for Lexi. You can make stars though! First make it dark using the special code: "night," then type "star." You can make as many stars as you want!

Lexi's World was made with love, tested with kids who proved its value and suggested many of the interactions - of course, "Lexi should be able to ride the horse." Now she can.

FEATURES
* Introduction to uppercase and lowercase letters.
* Introduction to letters forming words.
* A special keyboard that can only make words in the app's dictionary.
* Introduces the QWERTY keyboard.
* Make animals that move around and sometimes make sounds.
* Discover word combinations that unlock hidden events.
* Wishes appear for Lexi and her animal companions when they are tapped.
* Gives a hint the second time you tap, a good opportunity for parent involvement.
* At least one word for every letter of the alphabet.
* Support for both Zee and Zed.

AN HONEST EXPERIENCE
* No advertising.
* No internal currency or point-based reward systems.
* No personal information is collected or shared.

TRY IT FOR FREE
If you like it, buy the app forever or subscribe for a small amount every two months.

Payment will be charged to your Apple ID account at the confirmation of purchase. Subscription automatically renews unless it is canceled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. Your account will be charged for renewal within 24 hours prior to the end of the current period. You can manage and cancel your subscriptions by going to your account settings on the App Store after purchase.
Privacy Policy: http://poppoppop.info/lexi_privacy/
Terms of Use: http://poppoppop.info/lexi_terms/

ABOUT POP POP POP
Pop Pop Pop, is primarily the work of a single pop: Josh On, a designer, and developer living in San Francisco. In Lexi's World, he benefited from the vocal assistance of his daughter Aroha and the amazing music-making skills of Reilly Farrell.

Web: http://poppoppop.info
Twitter: https://twitter.com/poppoppop_apps
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/poppoppop.info
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LexisWorld.PopPopPop

THANK YOU
Thanks for your heartfelt reviews and feedback!

Version 3.0.08

A new word! It rhymes with soon and starts with m.

The developer, Pop Pop Pop LLC, indicated that the app's privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer's privacy policy.

Data Not Collected

The developer does not collect any data from this app.

Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More

Information

Compatibility

iPhone

Requires iOS 11.0 or later.

iPad

Requires iPadOS 11.0 or later.

iPod touch

Requires iOS 11.0 or later.

Mac

Requires macOS 11.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later.

Age Rating

4+, Made for Ages 0-5

In-App Purchases

1. Lexi World Subscription $0.49

2. Unlock Lexi's World $5.49

Family Sharing

Some in‑app purchases, including subscriptions, may be shareable with your family group when Family Sharing is enabled.

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‎** 2019 Honor Recipient of the Association for Library Service to Children's Excellence in Early Learning Digital Media Award ** ** 2019 Special Mention for Education in the BolognaRagazzi Digital Award ** "Explore Lexi's World, an enchanting app that provides a gentle introduction to letters, wor...

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‎Come join Tiggly in an underwater world of vowel exploration and new word discovery! A hungry octopus, a tinkering turtle, and sea of vowel fish are just some of the hilarious characters you’ll meet and interact with in the app. Tiggly Submarine helps develop children’s understanding of simple word…

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This app is great for people who want maximum flexibility. Out of the box, it has everything for communication and language growth. Yet, if you are an AAC expert, you can tailor it to almost any (accessibility) need.

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Create and share visual social stories and schedules with this app for iOS. Adding your own pictures, videos and recordings to stories you create makes it easier to share information while building literacy skills, as well as confidence in storytelling.

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* "Speak 'N Spell for the iPad Generation" - The New York Times *

Word Wizard is an award-winning app used in schools that offers several unique reading and spelling activities for children ages four to 10.

--Learn to Read by Building Words --

* The Talking Movable Alphabet activity allows kids to experiment with word building and phonics thanks to the advanced text to speech engine (the first step in learning to read)
* Any text can be written and spoken
* 2 child voices + 5 adult voices (US, UK & Australian voices)
* Uppercase & lowercase letters, numbers, digraphs, ABC or QWERTY keyboard
* Many settings to adapt the activities to the child's needs (letter size, assign images to words, high contrast modes for kids with visual impairment,...)

-- Learn to Spell using the Talking Movable Alphabet and your word lists --

* 3 spelling activities that increase in difficulty
* 200 built-in word lists (about 2000 words)
* Add your own words to create unique spelling quizzes!
* Add your own images to illustrate your word lists
* Keep tabs on your children's progress with detailed reports

_______

* Used in Schools (140K units sold to schools)
* "This is an important breakthrough in reading instruction" - The New York Times
* "This is a fantastic app for young children, right through to children in later elementary school " - Wired's GeekDad
* Editor's Choice Award for Excellence in Design - Children's Technology Review
* Winner of a Parents' Choice Award
* More than 290K units sold!
_______

Talking Movable Alphabet Activity
_______

* Pronounce and spell-check any word, number or sentence
* Natural Sounding Voice - three American voices, one British voice, and one Australian voice
* Letter sound (phonic) or name when a letter is touched in the alphabet
* Alphabetic or QWERTY layout, letters, numbers, consonant digraphs (like "th") and vowels digraphs (like "oo")
* Uppercase or lowercase letters
* Keyboard emulation option
* 4 letter sizes available (allowing for more or fewer letters on the board)
* Customized word pronunciation, if necessary
* Accessibility: external keyboard support and 4 high contrast modes available
_______

Fun Spelling Activities
_______

3 spelling activities of increasing difficulty are provided to adapt the activity to the child's spelling level. You can use the built-in word lists or create your own.

1 - "Word Practice" says and displays the word to spell, and asks the child to spell it using the talking movable alphabet
2 - "Scrambled Letters" says the word and displays the letters needed to build the word or sentence, and asks the child to reorder the letters.
3 - "Spelling Quizzes" is a standard spelling test. The app won't move onto the next word until the child has correctly spelled the word, helping them to remember its correct spelling.

* 200 built-in word lists: Words for beginners, Dolch Words, 1,000 most frequently used words, body parts and more
* Create custom Word Lists by entering your own words and sentences
* Import and export Word Lists you've created
* Hints are available should kids not know how to spell a word
* Colorful animations are displayed when a word is completed
* Once a quiz is completed, interactive animations are available as a reward

-- Users & Reports --
* Unlimited number of users
* Detailed Spelling Test Reports per user (can be exported in PDF)
_______

More Accolades
_______

* The New York Times
"This is an important breakthrough in reading instruction because it leverages the iPad's size, powerful speech synthesis abilities, and touchscreen so that every letter can be a building block of phonetically accurate sound"

* Children's Technology Review
Editor's Choice Award for Excellence in Design - 4.8 stars out of 5 - "Turn your iPad into a talking alphabet/language generator - and the perfect tool for a child just starting to experiment with letters and their sounds"
________

Please send any feedback or suggestions to support@lescapadou.com

Version 6.4.6

Minor bug fixes. As usual, please send us your feedback and suggestions so we can make the app even better (support@lescapadou.com). Thanks :-)

Boring for younger kids

It's a well thought out app but lacks playfulness and whimsy. My toddler (who is beginning to read and write) did two exercises and got bored after the dry "spell this, spell that" commands. Still it seems like a very promising app for older kids.

Word Wizard

This is truly a dream come true app. I teach students from grades 2-7th grades with learning difficulties spelling. This program has helped students learn to spell and boost their confidence and grades. Students use the iPad while wearing earbuds, so I can have a full class working with no with interruptions from others. Students with writing difficulties appreciate working on the iPad in place of trying to print or cursive words that are already difficult to spell let alone write out. So using the iPad allows them to find success. I export the lists from my iPad and import them onto my students iPads. When I ad the spelling lists, I also ad a test. Grades have really gone up after using this app. I think this is my 4th year of using it and Pierre is wonderful to communicate with. He's very helpful.

Thank you!

Words of Gratitude

I am so grateful for this App. I used it for my first son who has Autism . The app was a true confidence builder . The added features for speed , voice tone , colors , drag and pull were helpful collaboratively to engage him . I didn't hesitate to use it for my 2nd son also with Autism . Now 13 and 10 , I still use it opposed to just saying words for them . I use another app that allows me to make our own list of words for spelling test etc however this App will always be held with the highest esteem for phonics and our strong foundation . I refer parents to it all the time .
Best Regards
Keesha , RN

Thanks for your review - do you know that you can also add your own word lists in this app? If you need help, you can contact us at support@lescapadou.com

The developer, L'Escapadou, indicated that the app's privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer's privacy policy.

Data Not Collected

The developer does not collect any data from this app.

Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More

Information

Compatibility

iPhone

Requires iOS 11.3 or later.

iPad

Requires iPadOS 11.3 or later.

iPod touch

Requires iOS 11.3 or later.

Age Rating

4+, Made for Ages 0-5

Family Sharing

Up to six family members can use this app with Family Sharing enabled.

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‎* "Speak 'N Spell for the iPad Generation" - The New York Times * Word Wizard is an award-winning app used in schools that offers several unique reading and spelling activities for children ages four to 10. --Learn to Read by Building Words -- * The Talking Movable Alphabet activity allows kids t...

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‎From the BAFTA nominated pre-school learning TV shows Alphablocks and Numberblocks, we bring you Alphablocks Letter Fun! Your little ones are going to LOVE interacting with the Alphablocks in this amazing App. It’s hugely entertaining to play and makes a real difference to their reading through fu…

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** 2013 App of the Year Runner-Up **
** App Store's Editor's Choice **

*From the team at Originator - the creators of Sesame Street's Monster at the End of This Book, and Another Monster at the End of This Book. Originator is a team of passionate artists and engineers dedicated to the best education+entertainment apps for kids. We hope you enjoy playing with Endless Alphabet as much as we enjoy making it.*

Set the stage for reading success with this delightfully interactive educational app. Kids will have a blast learning their ABC's and building vocabulary with the adorable monsters in Endless Alphabet. Each word features an interactive puzzle game with talking letters and a short animation illustrating the definition. Before you know it, your child will be using words like gargantuan and cooperate!

**NOTE: You must be online and have ample disk space the first time you run the app so that all words are downloaded and can be played. **

Features:
- 100 words to learn and play with.
- Delightful animations teach children the definitions of the words in a fun and engaging way.
- Word game teaches children letters.
- 3D Touch on iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus makes letters and words react in an extra special way!
- Endless Alphabet was designed with your children in mind - there are no high scores, failures, limits or stress. Your children can interact with the app at their own pace.

This update includes minor bug fixes and performance improvements.

Option to not give the answer first

Would it be possible to not tell them the word before they interact with it. This seems to totally negate the learning to read words benefits.

I LOOOOOVEVEVEVEV THIS GAAAAEEEEM

My mom bought this game for me when I was like 3,4, or 5. I used to play this game all the time. BEST GAME EVER!!!

Wow!! Thanks for the kind words! We're so glad you've enjoyed Endless Alphabet!

No need

I love it I'm 7

Thanks for your review!! We're so glad you like Endless Alphabet.

The developer, Originator Inc., indicated that the app's privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer's privacy policy.

Data Not Linked to You

The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity:

Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More

Information

Compatibility

iPhone

Requires iOS 9.0 or later.

iPad

Requires iPadOS 9.0 or later.

iPod touch

Requires iOS 9.0 or later.

Mac

Requires macOS 11.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later.

Age Rating

4+, Made for Ages 0-5

Family Sharing

Up to six family members can use this app with Family Sharing enabled.

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‎** 2013 App of the Year Runner-Up ** ** App Store's Editor's Choice ** *From the team at Originator - the creators of Sesame Street's Monster at the End of This Book, and Another Monster at the End of This Book. Originator is a team of passionate artists and engineers dedicated to the best educ...

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‎ABC Ninja - The Alphabet Slicing Game for Kids

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‎“A great way to give parents a break and let your kid have fun and learn at the same time.” - Jen, Kindergarten teacher and mom of three. I have a confession to make. My son’s favorite game was Fruit Ninja and I was getting increasingly frustrated with having my son waste a lot of time on a fun b…

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Literacy Instruction for
Students with Significant Disabilities

"Phonemic awareness and alphabet learning should be interactive, authentic, and FUN!"
-Caroline Musselwhite

ALPHABET AND PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS

What is alphabet and phonological awareness?

During the emergent literacy phase, children are busy developing their oral language, their understandings of how and why to use print, and their early phonemic and syntactic awareness (Senechal, LeFerve, Smith-Chant, & Colton, 2001).

An important component of beginning reading instruction is effectively teaching letters and sounds. Related to letter and sound knowledge are phonological awareness (the ability to hear and manipulate sounds in oral language(, and phonemic awareness (the ability to hear and manipulate phonemes, the smallest units of sound in oral language). It can be tempting to teach these skills in isolation since they can be easily parsed, but they are very difficult to apply and generalize when they are taught in isolation. (from Quick Guides to Inclusion, page 185)

Alphabet knowledge is the knowledge of individual letter names, sounds, and shapes. The alphabetic principle is the idea that letters and groups of letters represent the sounds of spoken language. Readers apply the alphabetic principle through phonics when they use their knowledge of the relationships between sounds and letters to read both familiar and unfamiliar words.

The goal of instruction in the alphabetic principle is to teach students to apply their knowledge of letters and letter sounds rather than targeting identification, matching, and mastery through direct instruction and repeated trials. There is no evidence to support that isolated instruction of alphabet knowledge has any impact on important reading-related outcomes. (from Research Based Practices for Creating Access to the General Curriculum in Reading and Literacy for Students with Significant Intellectual Disabilities)

Which students would benefit from alphabet and phonological awareness?

know some of the letters of the alphabet, some of the time

do not yet know the letters of the alphabet

are beginning to develop letter-sound connections

have not yet developed letter-sound connections

are developing print awareness and are scribbling

How can students benefit from alphabet and phonological awareness?

Students who are at the emergent reading and writing level need explicit instruction around the alphabet and sounds to improve their alphabet knowledge and phonological awareness.

Hall and Williams (2000) list "letters and sounds" as one of the primary blocks that needs to be focused on in emergent literacy instruction. Letters and sounds are often listed together because as well as learning the letters, students also need to develop the alphabetic principle. They need to understand the different sounds that individual letters and groups of letters can make - and use this alphabetic principle to begin to spell words and to decode words. (from Jane Farrall)

Practice in manipulating sounds in words is a necessary preliminary ability to the systematic study of phonics, which takes the next step to connect these sounds to letters and words in print (word identification and decoding).

How do we teach alphabet and phonological awareness?

Students who are at the emergent reading and writing level need explicit instruction around the alphabet and sounds to improve their alphabet knowledge and phonological awareness. Using words to teach letters and sounds integrates the skills and teaches their application from the beginning.

At an emergent level, word work will focus on phonemic awareness with activities created to bring attention to rhyme (word endings), rhythm (memory), repetition, alliteration (word onsets), and predictability. Use words that are meaningful to the student, beginning with first names and other words that they are likely to see often.

When teaching letter and sound knowledge, use a variety of approaches that encourage generalized understanding from the beginning rather than rote learning, such as:

read alphabet books

point out letters and print in the environment

talk about letters and their sounds when you encounter them in every day activities

provide opportunities to play with letter shapes and sounds

explicitly reference letter names and sounds in shared reading and writing activities

use mnemonics and actions

use student names!

Some key ideas to keep in mind:

explicitly teach, model and emphasize sounds and letters throughout the day in meaningful contexts

teach phonological skills during regular activities (e.g. read alouds, telling stories, writing activities, word work, predictable chart writing, guided reading)

sound matching and sorting activities can be done with devices, PODD, eye gaze frames and with low tech paper solutions.

Following are suggestions for teaching alphabet and phonological awareness from Caroline Musselwhite:

Resources

Alphabet Action Man Game - Caroline Musselwhite
Too often, students with significant disabilities are taught the alphabet through flip cards and other boring, inauthentic tasks. The Alphabet Action Man Game is a quick activity for making alphabet instruction fun and meaningful.

Phoneme Isolation - Caroline Musselwhite
To support the development of phoneme isolation, which requires recognizing individual sounds.

Phonemic Sound Substitution - Caroline Musselwhite
To support the development of sound substitution, which requires listening to words, then substituting the initial sound to create a rhyming word.

Tar Heel Reader Alphabet Books
http://tarheelreader.org/favorites/?collection=alphabet-books

Where can I learn more about alphabet and phonological awareness?

The ABCs of Alphabet Knowledge and Phonological Awareness
Alphabet knowledge and phonological awareness are foundational components of emergent literacy. This 92-page book provides a rationale, brief research overview, and suggestions for interactive instructional tasks based on evidence based practice. While all of the activities in this book are appropriate for any emergent learners, the focus is on providing access to activities for learners with significant disabilities, including individuals with physical impairments and people who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). The strategies suggested focus on supporting ALL learners at home and in classrooms. This book should be informative and helpful for teachers, therapists, and family members. Use this book to explore best practice in alphabet knowledge AND engage in fun learning opportunities with a wide range of learners.

Word Wall, Word Activities and Extension into Writing
This presentation highlights the importance of meaningful, purposeful communication in learning to read and write and connecting oral language to phonological awareness. Many interactive and engaging word wall and word activity examples are provided.
http://www.literacyforallab.ca/past-webinars

Working with Words
Alberta teachers demonstrate how they use word walls and related making word activities to build literacy skills of all students in their classroom, including students with significant disabilities. (Length: 7 minutes 2 seconds)

Learning Guide: Working with Words

Support for Implementation

The resources found on this site were developed by the ERLC, a member of Alberta Regional Professional Development Consortia (ARPDC), as a result of grants from Alberta Education, to support implementation.

Learning for All | Copyright © 2016
Terms of Use | Contact Us

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Alphabet & phonological awareness | Literacy Instruction for Students with Significant Disabilities

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Literacy Instruction for Students with Significant Disabilities "Phonemic awareness and alphabet learning should be interactive, authentic, and FUN!" -Caroline Musselwhite ALPHABET AND PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS During the emergent literacy phase, children are busy developing their oral language, their understandings of how and why to use print, and their early phonemic and syntactic awareness (Senechal, LeFerve, Smith-Chant, & Colton, 2001).

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Jane Farrall Personalized Alphabet Cards

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Jane Farrall Personalized Alphabet Cards

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Last October, Sally Clendon and I ran a literacy course at Currumbin Community Special School. The school were fabulous hosts - and while we were there, we were able to see many of the great resources they use.

One which particularly impressed us was their personalised alphabet cards. They credited me with this idea - but if it was my idea then I have to give them the credit of making it so much better!!

At this stage, each staff member has made their own personalised alphabet cards. For each letter of the alphabet they choose an item which is most meaningful to them - and illustrate the card with a picture of that item. For example, if the staff member loves flowers, then this might be the illustration on their Ff card.

Once they have made them, they wear them throughout the school day - some staff have them on a lanyard, others wear them on a keyring - and they are used in a range of ways.

The most obvious use for the alphabet cards is for literacy activities, both explicit and incidental, and they are definitely used for this. A staff member might talk about a letter - and then show her card for that letter. Or as they are talking about a student's name, they might use the cards to discuss the letters.

But the school's deputy principal, Bex Nicotemo, explained how they have also become a great communication tool. Students might use them to initiate a discussion with staff on a favourite topic or to resume a discussion. Some students will use a photo of a staff member's family to initiate a discussion about their own family - or use a photo of a holiday to ask a staff member about what they are doing on their upcoming holiday. They have been a fabulous communication tool, providing options for initiation and discussion particularly in less-structured times, such as walking between rooms.

Some of the students also have their own personalised alphabet cards now - and the school is working on more and more students having their own. In many ways, this reminds me of the chat photo albums or photo books I have made for students in the past - and how these became such a good support for building social closeness.

I'm really keen to try using these myself, and with our Australian schools starting the new school year very soon, I have made my own personalised alphabet cards to wear. I'm really looking forward to seeing how they go! A copy of mine is below in case you'd like to have a chat with me 🙂

And if you would like to make your own in a similar way, I have made a template document in Word that you can download below:

Happy chatting and alphabetting!!

Reading At Home

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Let's Chat with Personalised Alphabet Cards

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Last October, Sally Clendon and I ran a literacy course at Currumbin Community Special School. The school were fabulous hosts - and while we were there, we were able to see many of the great resources they use. One which particularly impressed us was their personalised alphabet cards.

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It is currently the summer break in Australia and I've had a few emails and messages from teachers who are spending time over the break getting ready for the next school year. Several of these emails have been about alphabet activities and resources - so I thought I'd do a post about my ideas as a starting point - and I hope lots more ideas get shared in the comments below.

I do have to warn you in advance that this is going to be a long blog post - but I wanted to share lots of examples!

Why Letters and Sounds?

It is essential that each student develops their knowledge of letters and sounds along the way to becoming conventionally literate. Hall and Williams (2000) list "letters and sounds" as one of the primary blocks that needs to be focused on in an emergent literacy program. Letters and sounds are both mentioned because students need to develop their letter knowledge so that when they move onto words, they already have the letters under their belt (Adams, 1990). If they are learning to read the days of the week, one of the things that they can use to differentiate Monday from the other words, is the beginning letter - "it's the one that starts with M". Letter knowledge is often one of the earliest skills that students use in recognising and writing unfamiliar words. "Letters and sounds" are often listed together because as well as learning the letters, students also need to develop the alphabetic principle. They need to understand the different sounds that individual letters and groups of letters can make - and use this alphabetic principle to begin to spell words and to decode words.

In terms of helping students to learn the alphabet we are often recommended to do activities such as these:

Read alphabet books

Point out letters and print in the environment

Talk about letters and their sounds when you encounter them in every day activities

Provide opportunities to play with letter shapes and sounds

Explicitly reference letter names and sounds in shared reading and writing activities

Use mnemonics and actions

Use student NAMES!

(Koppenhaver, Clendon and Farrall, 2012)

The dot point that I get the most questions about is "providing opportunities to play with letter shapes and sounds" - so I'm going to spend the majority of this post focusing there. However, I also want to discuss how we make sure we cover the alphabet with our students. I know that many schools and classrooms do a "Letter of the Week" approach - and in fact I wrote a blog post about this a few years ago. However, focusing on a single letter for a week isn't the best approach (as I've learned since I wrote that blog post). We definitely want to see immersion in the whole alphabet during some activities - and this is currently the most recommended approach to learning the alphabet. However, many of the teachers I work with find it useful to have some focus letters for each week - this helps them make sure that they cover the whole alphabet and that each letter gets some attention. They might focus on anything between two and six letters each week. It is important that at least two letters are covered at any time though. If we use a letter of the week approach, it becomes too easy for students to answer questions such as "which letter does bus start with?" - because obviously it will be the letter of the week, "b". Having two letters as our focus means that students need to make a decision, and that extra thinking about letters helps them to learn them! In addition, having two letters gives students a chance to compare and contrast. It actually makes it easier to learn what "b" looks like when you can compare it to "s" - and we've seen much faster progress in classrooms that have moved to multiple letters of focus each week.

Now - onto that dot point!

Providing Opportunities to Play with Letter Shapes and Sounds

Many of the teachers that I work with schedule regular times for this to happen - but find it easy to get stuck doing the same set of activities again and again. The best thing to do, I've found, is to have a repertoire of resources, many of which will only be used for a few minutes, but which can be used throughout the term. As we use them, we talk about the letter and the sounds it makes, particularly focusing on the most common sounds. Here are some of my favourites:

Alphabet jigsaws - there are lots of these available. Below is a very simple one from KMart that I like because it makes the shapes of the letters very clear. However, a search on Pinterest shows that there are hundreds of different ones available - and many of them are in themes such as animals, transport, etc. Most of them are A-Z but there are some that only focus on one letter or a smaller group of letters. As an example, there's a nice set on Teachers Pay Teachers from Tanya Sisseck that has four piece jigsaws for every letter of the alphabet.

Cookie cutters - I got my alphabet biscuit (cookie) cutters a long time ago as a present - but they are available from many different shops. Towards the end of the school year, I was working with a classroom that was making tomato tarts out of puff pastry, ricotta and cherry tomatoes. Since they were making tomato tarts, we cut lots of T's out of the left over pastry. Then we cut each student's initial and put them on the tomato tarts. The students also wanted to cook the piece we cut the letters out of - so we did. Each tart was decorated with two Ts for tomato tart and the first letter of their first name. The cooking was the main focus - but we can wedge a bit of alphabet into anything 😉

Alphabet Beads - these are available in lots of different kinds and configurations. I can make up a bead bracelet with a student's name on it, or a necklace for the letters we are focusing on this week, or an A - Z chain as decoration - whatever the situation requires 🙂

Tattoo gel and face/body paints - it's been a great hit in several classrooms to decorate each students' hands or arms with two letters of the week. You can use face and body paint or tattoo gel. The tattoo gel has been more popular with some students because of the extra glitter factor but it is definitely harder to wash off!

Dice/Cubes - I love my pocket cubes. I used to make my own large dice out of cardboard but I was always re-making them. These have been durable, light and easy to handle. I have a range of cards with different letters on them, and then cards with different pictures, starting with different sounds. We use them in different ways - rolling for alphabet hopscotch, playing AAC alphabet, brainstorming words that start with the letter, finding objects in the room that start with the letter, etc. Lots of short, fun games - many of which are good alphabet packed action breaks.

Bath letters - these are great for water play on a hot afternoon. I like the way they stick to containers - so we can have a letter hunt and then put the letters we've found aside. Bath letters are available in lots of different stores.

Letter tiles - there are lots of options for letter tiles. I have a 176 piece tub from Amazon - it covers upper and lower case and has multiples of different letters. Versatile for sticking onto things with blue tack, sorting, organising and playing memory (middle photo). The third photo below is from a classroom at Willans Hill. The conventional students are doing word wall activities, and the emergent students are finding the initial letters of each word from a pile of letter tiles. This is a great activity to help students learn to discriminate letters from each other. I have also done this by putting all the letter tiles on the table, recording letters to find on a Step-by-Step Communicator and then getting them to make two piles - letters we need and letter we don't need. The conventional students then use the "letters we need" for Making Words. There are so many things you can do with these!

Letter cubes - letter cubes can be used for some of the same activities as letter tiles but have the added advantage of clicking together. So a student can make a tower composed of a specific group of letters, etc.

Making the letters - out of clay, pastry, play-dough, mud, kinetic sand....

Alphabet songs - there are hundreds of these on YouTube and other sites. My favourite "all age" alphabet songs are:

Each of these have different pros and cons - speed, graphics, explicit use of letter names and sounds - but they are all engaging and popular!

Letter sorts - these can be two kinds: visual and auditory. In a visual letter sort, the students sort them visually! Lorna from Adelaide West Special Education Centre did a fabulous visual letter sort one day when I was in her classroom. She tied the two letters she was focusing on that week out in the playground. For an activity break, her students had to collect them from the playground. As they found them, they came back to the door and put them into one of two containers - each of which was labelled with one of the two letters. The students loved the activity and it really engaged them in thinking about the letters as they sorted them. Another favourite of mine is to put large letters at two ends of a space - a room or a playground. I then ask the students to run to the letters - I might do it verbally or write them on my mini whiteboard.

We can also do visual word sorts where the focus is on the first letter - this is a great task for many students to teach them that words are made of letters and to pay attention to the features of words.
Click here to download Boardmaker files of cards that I've made to use for visual word sorts.
And finally, auditory sorts. Auditory sorts are done by saying a word (usually accompanied by a picture) and getting the student to determine which sound it starts with. When using pictures, you can get the student to say the word (verbally or using voice output) and then determine which sound starts the word. Below is a photo of a student doing an auditory word sort on a SmartBoard at Willans Hill School. Auditory word sorts are great for encouraging a student to really listen to the sounds at the beginning of words.

Click here to download Boardmaker files of cards that I've made to use for auditory word sorts (no text allowed).

Lakeshore has a commercial kit you can buy for auditory sorts - the Lakeshore Letter Sound Matching kit.

Light Up Letters - several stores are now selling light up letters. They are designed to be decorated - covered with paint or glitter etc. They are a wonderful way to explore, experience and discuss the shape of a letter. Spotlight is one of the stores selling these.

Large Papier Mache Letters - I love the large papier mache letters that are also for sale at several stores. Again, these are perfect for decorating and learning about the letter shapes. Great hands-on activity.

Dough stamps - again these are available at lots of different stores. I've bought cheap ones at dollar stores and the official PlayDoh ones (shown in the photo below). I like having several different sorts - ones that are shaped like the letters and ones which are labelled by the letters. The Lakeshore Stampers are more suitable for some students because of the nice long handle they have on them.

Magnetic letters - great fun to play with! Again - I have several different sorts. It's good to have a mix of both uppercase and lowercase and different fonts as well.

A - Z Posters and Sheets - it's great to have a range of these. I like them interactive - so I buy wooden letters and make my own pull off versions - with tracings of the letters sometimes on the board so that they can be put back. Sometimes, though, I just make them with dots of velcro - more challenging for the student to put them back. It's a great chance to interact with the alphabet. The picture below is of one I made with my nephew. I gave him a pile of cardboard letters and he coloured them in using glitter glue - then we stuck them on a laminated sheet. You can make lots of varied ones - and decorate and adorn them as you see fit, as well as buying commercial ones.

Pegs - I have different alphabet pegs. You'll see them all in the photos under alphabet wheels. One set are mini pegs that came with the alphabet already attached - and I just painted them. The other sets are full size pegs. For one of them I simply wrote the letters on the pegs with a permanent marker. The other set has wooden alphabet flags stuck on them. I use them for a range of activities - marking pages in a book to ask a student to "turn to B", alphabet wheels, pegging students' clothing as they take it off, especially if it isn't labelled already, and so on. They are yet another tool to embed the alphabet through lots of different daily tasks.

Below are a couple of photos I've collected in classrooms. The first one is from Kate at The Grove Education Centre. She had strips for helping students make upper and lower case letter connections. She made up strips with lower case letters and stuck foam letters on wooden pegs to make this up.

The next one is from Malibu School - but they are an online resource that the teacher printed and can't find the link for. (If you know it - please tell me!). Again these focus on upper and lower case connections. The pegs in this activity are just plain ones 🙂

Letter and Sound Wheels - there are lots and lots of templates for letter and sound wheels online or you can make your own from scratch. They tend to have different purposes.

This first one is a quick and dirty one I made up for a student who was still consolidating some letters of the alphabet. I wrote letters on a paper plate and used my handwritten alphabet pegs - and he had to match them. Then we did the task again with plain pegs - where I called out the letter and he had to peg the right letter.

The second ones are "posher" - I made them up, laminated them and reuse them. One of them has lower case letters and the other has upper case letters. Students can then practice their upper case / lower case pairings with lower case or upper case alphabet pegs. Click here to download the Word documents to make your own wheels.

And finally, we have letter and sound wheels. These are usually picture based wheels - where the student pegs the picture with the appropriate peg for the initial sound, such as the one below. ( Click here to download the wheel below)
Or (like the ones pictured below) a wheel with a letter and a picture window. The picture starts with the appropriate letter for a nice letter-sound activity. I downloaded these online from this link and made them up.
Tracing letters - trace the letters on a table or bench or a perspex screen in shaving foam or flour or paint. You don't necessarily have to have the letter there to trace - just draw it freehand. There are lots of pictures of all of these on Google. One teacher I worked with, the wonderful Tammy from The Grove Education Centre, had students with different allergies, sensory needs etc - and came up with a great idea that all of her students could engage with - which was putting the letter on the bottom of a tray and covering it with salt.

Wheat Bag Letters - Ayko from Malkara School is the creative teacher who made these. She sewed them herself (which I believe involves something to do with needles). Malkara is in Canberra and the climate goes from very hot to very cold (for Australia). In summer, Ayko puts them in the freezer and then the students can hold them and interact with them. In winter, she microwaves them so they are nice and warm - and the same applies. A great quick activity.

Whiteboards, Noticeboards, Light-up boards, LED Writing boards, Blackboards - All of these are great tools to have in your toolkit. I frequently walk around with a small, portable whiteboard that I can use to convert speech to text. I can use it to write a quick message to a student, write some letters, etc.

Light-Up Drawing Boards and LED Writing Boards are great for students with cortical vision impairment. High contrast and bright!

I love my Felt Notice Board from Typo. Again it's nice and high contrast. The letters that you clip in are a great activity in themselves - I can come up with the message and then ask a student to find the letters for me as I need them.

ABC Fish and Alphabet Soup - ABC Fish is one of my home-made activities. I bought some cheap fishing games at a Dollar Shop, a couple of packets of ping pong balls and used some magnets and magnetic tape I already had at home. I wrote the letters of the alphabet on the ping pong balls, stuck magnetic tape on them and on the fish included in the original pack, put it all in a plastic container and called it ABC fish. Lots of fun - and great opportunities to interact with the letters and talk about their sounds.

The amazing Amanda from Willans Hill made a similar activity on a bigger scale and called it alphabet soup. Instead of fishing rods she has a ladle 🙂

Tactile Letters - there are different raised or tactile letters available. There are Feely Fabric Letters, Squidgy Sparkle Letters and Tactile Letters. I have a set of Montessori sandpaper letters which have been really durable and are available in both lower and upper case. There are also i nstructions online for making your own sandpaper letters.

Foam letters - foam letters are available in so many sizes and types. Magnetic, stickers, plain, etc. One of my favourites is those large alphabet foam mats - you can pull them apart, pull the letters out, feel the letters, put them back in, make the mat, talk about the letter sounds, etc. Another great hands-on activity (or set of activities).

Alphabet AAC - this is an activity made by the wonderful Kim at Malibu School. Students roll a dice, move their piece, and then once they land on a letter they look for a word that starts with it in their AAC system. They love playing it!

Alphabet Scrapbooking - Jess at Willans Hill set her emergent students a task of working through magazines and finding pictures or logos that started with different letters. Over the year they turned these into their alphabet scrapbooks. They could add to pages, look back and talk about them and use them as a resource in other activities.

Alphabet Hopscotch - I first saw this in Heather's classroom at Para Meadows School. They played it in different ways. One option was to use a pocket cube setup with the same letters - students had to jump onto the letter thrown on the cube. The caller would have to name the letter. In another version, the caller would simply name a letter and the student would have to jump onto it. While I was in the classroom they also played this via auditory scanning with a student in a wheelchair.

All-Turn-It Spinner - the All-Turn-It Spinner is another great and versatile tool. It has the added advantage of being switch accessible as well as direct access. You could use it to play a range of alphabet games including the alphabet hopscotch above or to call out letters to run to. I made the overlay up with some of those ubiquitous alphabet foam stickers.

Name wall - we shouldn't use a word wall with emergent students as they aren't yet ready to move onto word activities. Hall and Williams (2000) suggest using a name wall instead. It is formatted in a similar way to a Word Wall but only has the students' names on it. The wall becomes a great alphabet teaching and learning tool and also provides a focus on student names and lots of opportunities to talk about the letters in the names. Below is a photo of Charmaine's name wall from Malkara School.

Name trail - I saw this in Peter's classroom at Willans Hill. Peter is an amazing teacher and wedges so much into every day in his classroom. The name trail was made with tape on the floor inside the classroom door. Each time his class had to line up at the door, they had to find their name on the tape. Peter changed the position of the names regularly to keep them on their toes.

Letter boxes and bags - teachers have long used letter bags and/or boxes in teaching the alphabet. Rachel Dougherty, one of the amazing Master Teachers in Brisbane, has fabulous literacy trolley. One of the items on her trolley is a series of bags - one for each letter of the alphabet, each containing pictures of objects that start with the letter. It's a great way to be able to pull out appropriate pictures as needed.

Below is a photo of a letter box that I took in a classroom (I have forgotten which classroom - so please let me know if it is yours). This classroom is obviously doing the letters M and O and all of the objects in the box start with those letters. This lets them do auditory sorts and get really hands on 🙂

Single Letter Cards and Shapes - I copied this idea from the amazing Amanda at Willans Hill. Amanda has a display of alphabet bags in her classroom as shown in the picture below. Inside each bag are a mixture of plastic letters, magnetic letters, wooden letters and foam letters in both upper and lower cases. I copied her idea but I also made up lots of letter cards in my kit - and to better meet my needs, my kit is stored in a box rather than on the wall (see below).

Every year I have a discussion with at least one teacher or parent who tells me that one of their students knows the alphabet as long as they use specific alphabet cards or a specific font. We need to avoid this and make sure that we make resources in different fonts, different sizes and that we don't always use the one set of cards. So - I have made up several different sets of cards, some upper and lower case, in different fonts and at different sizes. Below are the contents of my letter N bag. This will definitely ensure that a student doesn't exhibit skills with only one specific set of cards!
Finger Spelling and Braille - Don't forget to accompany your alphabet activities with the fingerspelled alphabet or with Braille, if appropriate. If you are supporting a student who is learning Braille or who is using Braille to build their Concepts about Print, I highly recommended a hand-held Brailler if you don't have access to another Braille printer.

Apps - I'm not going to talk much about apps in this post.I'll aim to do a separate post on apps sometime in the future! However, please remember that apps don't give students the opportunity to go hands on and learn the shapes of the letters by feeling them. They are a great addition to all the different alphabet activities we do but should never be the only activity.

And finally - please remember that you are an important component of nearly all of the activities I have mentioned. You can talk about the letters and sounds during the activities, make print-to-meaning links for students and help them to focus, learn and consolidate. Your role is really important in each student's learning. If a student can do an activity independently we need make sure we are clear on what it is teaching them and what their goals are. For students to learn we have to teach - and for them to continue to learn and to be engaged we need to constantly evaluate and change goals, materials and resources.

And please, please share your ideas and thoughts on letter and sound activities in the comments below.

Happy Alphabet-ting!

Who Tipped the Bike?

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Teaching (and Learning) the Alphabet: Playing with Letter Shapes and Sounds

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It is currently the summer break in Australia and I've had a few emails and messages from teachers who are spending time over the break getting ready for the next school year.

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Welcome Teachers & Parents of Emerging Readers! The books created on this site are all free for teachers & parents to use with emerging readers with significant disabilities of all ages.

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Phonemic awareness activities that older students find fun?

[ TL;DR. Get Funny Phonemes on the App Store or Google Play.]

In a previous post, we talked about the challenge of making phonemic awareness activities for older students fun and engaging. One idea was to train on words that are shocking like swear words. This isn't really feasible in a school or tutoring setting. So I thought, "Why not use clean slang and words for things that matter to older students?"

Funny Phonemes brings the fun!

Victoria was busily writing new decodable stories for TAP this summer and I'd finished adapting TAP for smartphones and releasing an Android version. I found myself with "some time" for a side project. 300 hours later, that project is Funny Phonemes. It's an app for phonemic awareness training using clean slang and pop-culture jargon.

I quietly launched Funny Phonemes yesterday: you can get it on the App Store or on Google Play. It has a variety of phonemic awareness activities that allow students to practice hearing phonemes, identifying missing phonemes and arranging them into words. What words? Over 250 of them including surfing terms, social media lingo, school-yard epithets and, of course, a few terms worthy of Captain Underpants.

There's a built-in dictionary of the slang definitions of the words or, at least, the clean slang definitions. For example, nuts is one of the words and has multiple definitions. Some usage is not slang at all and so not in the slang dictionary: The squirrel's diet consists mostly of nuts. Other usages are clean slang: Jump off that cliff! Are you nuts? The definition of this usage is in there. Yet another usage would not be suitable for this app: If he's not careful, he gonna get kicked in the...

Since older students in need of phonemic awareness training are necessarily struggling or non-readers, it was important to include a text-to-speech feature in the app. The slang dictionary entries and any instructions specific to the phonemic awareness activities can be read to the student by the device.

It Takes a Village to Build An App

I showed an early version of the app to Tricia Millar of That Reading Thing and That Spelling Thing fame and she kindly gave me a lot of great feedback. One key idea was that attaching written symbols which aren't the correct spelling to spoken sounds could be misleading and even harmful to students who struggle with reading and writing. The phoneme tiles now have icons by default (text labels are available as a option...just in case). Thanks for the tip, Tricia!

While I'm at it, I'd like to thank Victoria for advising me on words that would be suitable for use in a teaching setting. That being said, I take full responsibility for every word included in Funny Phonemes. I'd also like to thank my eldest son Ben (a professional video game programmer and all-around great guy) for suggesting I add extra goodies and generally make the app juicier.

You control the focus of these phonemic awareness activities

One very important feature is the phoneme set editor. This is what allows you to control the phonemes you want to have your student practice. I've made a two-minute demo video that you can watch here.

Phonemic awareness training is more effective if the spoken words are in the student's dialect, so I'd like to add recordings of native speakers representative of a wide variety of accents. For now, the "Cowboy" novelty voice is a caricature of Southern American English and "Britishish" of RP ( Received Pronunciation). (I'll let you figure out who speaks with a "Dark and Mysterious" voice.)

When I'm building apps, it's very easy to start thinking it needs just one more thing. This is such a common problem that it has a name: feature creep. I've plenty of ideas for improving this app. Hopefully users will also send me ideas that haven't even occurred to me. For now, I hope you'll go get Funny Phonemes on the App Store or on Google Play. Let me know how your older students respond to these phonemic awareness activities. Are they phat, sweet, def, tasty, sick, rad, cool, awesome, tight or perhaps lit? #LiteracyForAll

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New PA training app is free for iOS and Android

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TL;DR. Get Funny Phonemes on the App Store or Google Play.] In a previous post, we talked about the challenge of making phonemic awareness activities for older students fun and engaging. One idea was to train on words that are shocking like swear words. This isn't really feasible in a school or tutoring setting.

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To set up your own classroom or home routine, click on this link for the directions to each step in teaching alphabet awareness for your emerging reader(s). Below is a short video on how you can use the Letter a Day Instructional Routine.

If you'd like to make your own book from scratch, you can use this template book. When you click on this link , it will prompt you to "make a copy" that you can download or save to your own Google Drive. Below, there are 3 short tutorial videos on how you can use this template.

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Reading & Writing 4 All - Make Your Own Books

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To set up your own classroom or home routine, click on this link for the directions to each step in teaching alphabet awareness for your emerging reader(s). Below is a short video on how you can use the Letter a Day Instructional Routine.

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Jane Farrall: Working With Letters & Sounds

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Jane Farrall: Working With Letters & Sounds

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Teaching an emergent student the letters and sounds in the alphabet is an important part of their learning. It is important that we realise that some students will be learning the alphabet for a while and we need to have enough different activities to keep engaging them.

We want to focus on alphabet instruction with a minimum of 2 letters per week. A single letter of the week approach, while common, is not evidence based for any group of students. Students need to experience multiple letters to be able to compare and contrast between them - it is actually easier to learn about A when you can compare it to B. If you give them nothing to compare it to, then you are making the task harder.

Students who are at the very beginning of their journey towards learning the alphabet may do best with a focus on 2 - 6 letters of the week. We want to do a mixture of incidental and explicit teaching in alphabet instruction. This means that we will do some specific activities where we talk very explicitly about the focus letters. Then we talk about the letter any time possible as we come across it - this is the incidental component.

In your weekly activities include some alphabet sorts - letter sorts sorts are a really valuable activity because they require students to think and discriminate but they are only one example of activities we should do with the alphabet.

You can get lots of ideas for alphabet activities online - plus using the resources you already have. You can find some suggestions for alphabet activities at:

Students who know more than 50% of the alphabet should be doing onset rime activities to help improve their phonemic awareness. Onset rime has been shown to be one of the most effective strategies we can use to build phonemic awareness. Children with CCN may have difficulties developing phonemic awareness so we usually start tackling this once a student knows about half the alphabet.

Targeting Onset Rime with Emergent Literacy Learners is a blog post which will give you more information about this topic.
Blog Posts from Jane Farrall Consulting related to Letters and Sounds (additional to the ones above):

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Teaching an emergent student the letters and sounds in the alphabet is an important part of their learning. It is important that we realise that some students will be learning the alphabet for a while and we need to have enough different activities to keep engaging them.

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Spinning Wheels are a great way of introducing an element of randomness into the classroom.

A quick Google search reveals how popular spinning wheels are. They can be used for a number of games and they can also be used to determine the points students receive, the topic they are going to talk about or the question they have to answer.

You can find some spinning wheels online and there are also apps available for both iOS and Android, but what if you want to use a spinning wheel in your presentation?

So, I created a spinning wheel in PowerPoint. There are some advantages to this version. It can be inserted into any presentation by copying and pasting the slide and it doesn't require an internet connection.

Watch the Spinning Wheel demo to see how it used.

Video demo of the spinning wheel.
Video runtime is 1 minute and 29 seconds.

Follow the link or click on the image to download the template.

Once you have downloaded the template, add your own text to each segment of the wheel.

1. You may choose to add points and your students spin the wheel to determine what points they win.

2. You may prefer to add topics and ask your students to discuss them over a set amount of time.

3. You could also add question markers and ask your students to spin the wheel to determine the question they should answer.

Using the template

How you use the template depends on what kind of spinning wheel you create.

If you create a spinning wheel with points or prizes, then it will probably accompany a game or activity you have already prepared. The wheel will then be spun intermittently throughout that activity.

What about creating a spinning wheel that is the focus of the activity.

Topics

The Spinning Wheel as projected on a surface.
This version shows different topics written in each segment.

Prepare your spinning wheel by writing a topic for each segment.

Divide your students into pairs or groups.

Spin the wheel.

Nominate a student to say when to stop the wheel.

Stop the wheel.

Introduce the topic.

Encourage your students to talk about the topic for a set time.

Assign a time limit of 2 minutes or negotiate a time limit with your students.

When the time is up, ask the students to stop talking.

Spin the wheel again.

Introduce the next topic and set a new time limit.

Repeat as many times as necessary.

The Spinning Wheel as projected on a surface.
This version shows different question prompts written in each segment.

Prepare your spinning wheel by writing a question number in each segment.

Prepare a list of 20 questions.

Divide your students into pairs, groups or teams.

Spin the wheel.

Nominate a student to say when to stop the wheel.

Stop the wheel.

Ask the question associated with the question number on the wheel.

Any student, pair, group or team can answer.

If the answer correctly, spin the wheel. The student who got the previous question correct and say when to stop the wheel.

If the student answers incorrectly, leave the question open. Encourage the other students to answer the question.

If no student has answer within a time limit, spin the wheel again.

Spin the wheel again to introduce the next question.

Repeat as many times as necessary or until all questions have been answered.

How the template works

Video tutorial showing how to change the effect options.
Video runtime is 1 minute and 6 seconds.

The spinning wheel was created by dividing a circle into 20 segments and then applying a continuous spin animation, which is assigned to a trigger. The trigger in this case is the start button labelled 'spin.' The result is a spinning wheel that can be activated by clicking a button.

To create your own spinning wheel, you need to do the following three things:

1. Divide a circle into equal segments and then group the segment together. After which you can apply a spin animation.

2. Repeat the animation so it continues until the next mouse click.

3. Create an anchor so the PowerPoint doesn't transition to the next slide.

Creating a spinning wheel

The spinning wheel was created by drawing a large circle.

Rectangles that were longer than the diameter of the circle and that had a width of 0.01 were placed over the circle.

All the shapes were selected, and fragment shapes was chosen from the merge shapes option on the format ribbon.

This divided the circle into segments. The color of each segment was changed and a text box was placed over each segment.

All these shapes were then grouped together.

A smaller circle was drawn and placed in the center of the wheel. This would act as the start button.

The wheel group was selected and given a spin animation. The start button was assigned as a trigger for this animation.

Set a repeat animation by opening the Effect Options / Timing dialog.

Select the wheel. You will notice that it has a spin animation.

Open the animation pane.

Go to the animations ribbon.

In the advanced animation section, there is a small icon labelled animation pane.

Click on the icon to open the animation pane.

Left-click on the down arrow next to the spin animation.

Click on effect options. Make sure the spin animation is set to 360 degrees.

Go to the timing tab.

To go directly to the timing tab, left-click on the down arrow next to the animation.

Click on timing.

Select until next click from the repeat drop down box. The animation will now be continuous.

Click OK.

The spin animation will continue until the next mouse click, but that mouse click will also move to the next slide unless an anchor is created. It is called an anchor because it keeps you on the same slide.

The anchor is an invisible shape that is hidden behind the spin button.

The first time the spin button is clicked, the wheel begins to spin.

The second time the spin button is clicked, the wheel will stop spinning and the hidden shape will appear and disappear in 00.02 seconds.

Now the spin animation can be repeated as many times as necessary before you move to the next slide.

Screenshot of the 'anchor' with the animation pane and selection pane open.

Caution: Don't delete the anchor as it will affect the functionality of the template.

The above steps should give you some idea about how to create new spinning wheels if you want more or less segments.

Do you have any suggestions regarding the Spinning Wheel?

Please leave a comment if you have any ideas you would like to share or if you have any questions about the template.

Alternatively you can send me a message on my Facebook page or on Twitter.

Thanks for reading and take care!
You may also like to read: The Mystery Door Game is a fun way to get students involved in their own education by providing opportunities to make choices about what they are going to learn or do. This activity can be used to choose topics of discussion, choose activities, choose a challenge, or choosing a reward. Random Choices The Spinning Wheel was designed with Microsoft PowerPoint 2016. Animations and sounds may differ when opened in other presentation software. Microsoft® Office® is a copyrighted product of the Microsoft® corporation. All images are for educational purposes only. The template and images in this post are free to download but they are intended for educational purposes only. is based on an activity I came across in 'Drama and Improvisation' by Ken Wilson. The excel file chooses a random activity, location and time from a list. By pressing F9, you can generate new random choices. Students can then explain why they are doing the activity in an unusual place, or it can be used as part of a gesture or hot seat activity.

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Spinning Wheels are a great way of introducing an element of randomness into the classroom. A quick Google search reveals how popular spinning wheels are. They can be used for a number of games and they can also be used to determine the points students receive, the topic they are going to talk about or the question they have...

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https://www.janefarrall.com/

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Teachers, Therapists and Parents can create custom learning materials for their classroom and teacing needs. Create cheap picture cards, use our powerful language tools like our SoundFinder and build all of your classroom visuals in minutes.

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The First Ever Editable Curriculum!

Activities-to-Go is a customizable ELA curriculum brought to you by Boardmaker 7.

Thematic instruction designed for students with special needs in K-12.

Access all 40 units with your Boardmaker 7 subscription

Choose from 3 different levels of instruction

Edit, print, or play on your tablet or desktop

Features

Teach all of today's most popular science, social studies, and life skills topics to students at different levels.

Print to support students with language challenges. It's editable and matches perfectly with Snap Core First, our symbol-based communication app.

Activities-to-Go was created using Boardmaker 7 templates. This means you can extend learning by creating new activities or entirely new units!

Looking to try out Activities-to-Go?

Try our sample units!

What activities come in each unit?

Books at different Lexile levels for students of all levels in K-12

Activity schedule to support behavior and manage activity flow

Vocabulary activity to expand knowledge of high-utility words

Matching activity to reinforce concepts and vocabulary

Board game and bingo to cement learning through plays

Crafts, recipes,and much more!

Identifies the Big Idea, the targeted vocabulary, and provides you with tips for teaching and supporting communication.

Tells you everything you need to begin teaching today's relevant science, social studies and life skills topics.

Lays out the research that informs the design of this program.

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Boardmaker Activities to Go Download, print, and go! Activities-to-Go Edit, print, and go! Activities-to-Go Overview Download a free unit Overview Resources The First Ever Editable Curriculum! Activities-to-Go is a customizable ELA curriculum brought to you by Boardmaker 7. Thematic instruction designed for students wi

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Phonemic awareness is an important skill - it is what we use to hear sounds in speech. Without phonemic awareness, we cannot break words down and decode them to read unfamiliar words. We also find it extremely hard to re-code words to spell them. Therefore, phonemic awareness is a very important skill in learning to read and write.

In my previous couple of posts about word walls, I talked about the onset rime word families as a tool for teaching decoding and re-coding, which are conventional literacy tasks. Onset rime can also be used with emergent students to help them hear the sounds in speech, also known as phonemic awareness. Hearing these sounds is an important skill for learning about letters and the sounds they make in words and this can develop when students are emergent - and continues to develop once they are conventional.

Onset Rime has been shown to be one of the most effective ways of improving phonemic awareness and doing some short onset rime activities regularly with emergent literacy learners can help them to start to hear sounds in speech - which, in turn, helps them to learn to work with words later in their literacy development.

Below is a plan for working on onset rime across a week. This is intended as an example - you can continue with similar and different activities with other word families to help each literacy learner develop this skill. It is important to remember that these activities are not done with the aim of a student getting each word family "correct" or the with aim of them learning to spell the word family. The aim here is for literacy learners to increase their ability to hear sounds in words - and this might happen over several weeks or months of repeating onset rime and other activities.

Generally, I don't start these activities until a student knows at least 50% of the alphabet. There's no research basis for this - just my experience is that this is when the student begins to know enough about literacy that this makes sense.

In the onset rime plan you'll notice that for the first three days of the week, the tasks are passive or exposure tasks. We introduce the word family and interact with it. The tasks in the first three days are ones that don't have any "right or wrong". Then on Thursday and Friday we start introducing tasks that need the student to start listening and discriminating. This program should take you less than 10 minutes each day.
Overall Resources
I find it really helpful to have onset rime folders that I can pull out and use - and that are designed so I can use them as quickly and easily as possible. The photos above show how I make them up - common onsets are on the left-hand side; rimes are on the right-hand side. The front cover of the clipboard has Velcro strips where I can put just the pieces I need for the activity we are doing.

I have deliberately made the folders up with the rime as one chunk - so that students can easily see that it is just the onset sound/letter that is changing.

I have three different folders for this purpose, each containing a different set of word families. You can download the files to make these up here:
Week Long Plan - Onset rime with the "-at" word family
Monday: Introduce the "at" word family with this song:

Listen once through the song, then play it again, using the onset rime folder to make the words as they are mentioned (see the video under Tuesday for an example). Have the rime "at" and the onsets needed ready to go on the front cover of the folder to make the words up.

Offer students the onset letters and when they choose a letter put it with the rime and tell them what word they've made. Say the word in a sentence. Remember: this is a passive task. You are just showing the students how changing the initial sound changes the word. Exposure is the important goal at this stage - we aren't asking students to discriminate yet.

Tuesday: Read "The Cat who just wanted a pat" by Emma Goldston. You can download this from Tar Heel Reader by right clicking the link.

As you read the book, use the word family folder or a carpet board to make each of the words in the -at word family that have a single letter onset. You can reinforce what students are seeing in the book. See the video below for an example.

Hide onset letters around the room and ask the students to find them. As they find them, put the letter they have found together with the rime and talk about the word it makes. Put the word into a sentence.

Wednesday: Read "The "at" word family" by Dawn Alexander

Make up the -at word family onset rime kit created by the clever Emma Goldston from Claremont State Special School and pictured below. Ask students to select a picture and then you make up the word that goes with the picture.
Download files for this activity by clicking here.
Thursday: Read " One Cat" by Jane Farrall. You can read it on Tar Heel Reader or download it.

Talk about the words in the book and ask students to choose which letter they would put in front of "at" to make one of the words. For some students you might offer them a choice of two letters and for others you might offer a choice of more.

See the video below for an example.

Friday Read The Cat by Jane Farrall (again, you can access this or download it from Tar Heel Reader by clicking on the link).

Use the "at" Onset Rime kit to play with the word family in different ways.

For example, you could put a picture at the top and ask the student to select the letter to add to "at" to make the picture.

If appropriate, you could select a letter and put it next to "at" to make a word. You could then ask the student to select the picture for that word. (You will probably need to read the word out to most students.)
Other resources you could use through the week
And make sure your classroom has a good selection of rhyming books. My personal favourites are books by Aaron Blabey because of their humour and rhythm and rhyme - but of course there is a diverse selection of rhyming books from traditional nursery rhymes to Dr Seuss. There are also some early readers that your school might own which have a focus on onset rime.
Working further on onset rime
There are 37 word families in English so you can bring in a new word family each week to ensure you get repetition with variety. You then do similar tasks to improve student phonemic awareness with each word family. As I said at the beginning - this isn't about a student achieving any level of skill with one word family - it's about them developing their phonemic awareness overall. So - change word families weekly, until the student is reliably hearing and finding the initial sounds in words.

Word families: ack, ap, est, ing, ot, ail, ash, ice, ink, uck, ain, at, ick, ip, ug, ake, ate, ide, it, ump, ale, aw, ight, ock, unk, ame, ay, ill, oke, ank, an, eat, in, op, ell, ine, ore.

And a big thanks to Lidia from Adelaide North Special School and Rowan and students from Acacia Hill School for allowing me to share these videos. Also thank-you, thank-you, thank-you to Emma Goldston for allowing me to share her onset rime resources.

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Targeting Onset Rime with Emergent Literacy Learners

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Phonemic awareness is an important skill - it is what we use to hear sounds in speech. Without phonemic awareness, we cannot break words down and decode them to read unfamiliar words. We also find it extremely hard to re-code words to spell them.

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This app includes 50 lessons designed for students to build spelling skills and develop phonemic awareness. The format and word sequencing were developed by Patricia Cunningham and have been recognized for their ability to motivate students in a fun way. The audio narration was performed by Adam Ghassemi, a professional voice over artist with 10+ years of experience. While developing this app we received feedback from several educators on how to present this activity to students.

This free version includes 3 lessons. You can purchase the full version through an in-app purchase.

The app is designed to be used independently but can also work well where a teacher or family member is available to work through word families with the student(s). Speech language pathologists and special ed teachers will appreciate the structured sequencing in each lesson.

The top 3 reasons teachers love this app are as follows:

1) Features 50 fun and interactive lessons for building phonemic awareness, phonics, and spelling skills with your students.

2) Presents a concise method for identifying phonological units and patterns within words.

3) Promotes student awareness of similarities in words that helps develop writing skills.

Each lesson focuses on a primary letter pattern and includes a number of words in that pattern that the students spell. The first lesson is the 'at' word family. Students must place the letters in the letter spaces by dragging the letters from the bottom. The app will automatically determine if the word is correct when all of the letter spaces have been filled. Students are encouraged to use the audio support to hear clear instructions. Once the students have spelled the target word, the app will prompt them to spell the next word in the sequence.

The app automatically tracks how many errors the students are making during each lesson. If zero mistakes have been made, the students receive three stars which are shown on the home screen. If less than three mistakes are made, the students receive two stars. If three or more mistakes are made the students receive one star. By tracking the number of errors, teachers and parents can easily see how well their students are doing and which lessons they have completed on the home screen. To reset all stars to zero, simple press the 'Reset Stars' button.

Making Words has been recognized as a great activity because it helps students understand similarities in words. Further, it presents an effective structure for strengthening spelling and phonics skills. By keeping each lesson to one word family the app develops students understanding of letter patterns. A review level is presented after each set of word families that correlate. For example, after the at, am, ad, ap, and an families, there is a review lesson.

We'd love to hear how you are using the app in the classroom and/or home. contact@tapfun.com

Thank you for your feedback.

**********

More about Patricia Cunningham and Phonemic Awareness

Patricia Cunningham developed the Making Words activity while working with Title I teachers in North Carolina. In 1991 she wrote "Phonics They Use: Words for Reading and Writing" which is currently available in its fourth edition.

According to Allyn and Bacon, Phonemic awareness includes the ability to recognize that words are made up of a discrete set of sounds and the ability to manipulate sounds. Phonemic awareness is an oral ability - the ability to hear that words begin alike, that words rhyme, and that, for example, there are three sounds in the word c-a-t. Phonemic awareness is highly correlated with success in beginning reading. Phonics instruction begins with learning to tie particular consonant letters to the sounds they typically make. Unlike phonemic awareness, which requires students to attend to both the visual form of the letter and the sound it makes. Phonics knowledge is necessary to read or decode unknown words and to spell or encode words.

This app has been updated by Apple to display the Apple Watch app icon.

Thank you for your support. We have added an option on the home screen to turn off the letter sound.

Not as good as it looked

The whole app seems to focus only on the onset, rime stays the same for all words in a level.

Sound is not working!

Useless without sound. Using on an iPad 3...

The developer, Tapfun Inc., has not provided details about its privacy practices and handling of data to Apple. For more information, see the developer's privacy policy.

No Details Provided

The developer will be required to provide privacy details when they submit their next app update.

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making words kindergarten and first grade

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‎Making Words Kindergarten and First Grade

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‎This app includes 50 lessons designed for students to build spelling skills and develop phonemic awareness. The format and word sequencing were developed by Patricia Cunningham and have been recognized for their ability to motivate students in a fun way. The audio narration was performed by Adam Gha...

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A collection of the most wonderful wordless picture books to share with your children and add to your bookshelf.

There are so many great picture books to choose from - , fabulous read alouds, preposition rich texts, A to Zs of alphabet books but every book shelf needs to save some space for some of the most wonderful wordless picture books! Sharing 20 of our most favourite wordless books and why you should have some in your picture book collection. riotous rhyming books

This post contains affiliate links.

Journey - the first of a trilogy, is a elaborately illustrated wordless book that follows a lonely girl on her journey as she escapes the boredom of her bedroom into a magical world. You can watch this short video about how the book Journey was made. It's amazing being able to watch Aaron work.

is the second book of the series by Aaron Becker while Quest Return concludes the trilogy.

Where's Walrus? by Stephen Savage we loved from the moment we saw this clip and the book doesn't disappoint. Kids love trying to spot the walrus after he escapes from the zoo. He wears many disguises trying to evade the zookeeper - a fun book for younger children particularly.

Zoom by Istvan Banyai we gifted to a family member earlier in the year. It's so cleverly done - a page will zoom out detail featured on the previous page and so the layers build.

Leaf by Stephen Michael King is another beautifully illustrated watercolour book that has you watching time pass after a seed lands on the head of a wilful young boy who was evading a haircut.

Changes, Changes by Pat Hutchins I bought after seeing a post on Teach Preschool a while back. I'm always on the hunt for good books that invite action or encourage experimentation and Changes, Changes is a great addition to a block area.

A Long Piece of String by William Wondriska is an older book originally published in the 1960's but I love an alphabet book and this one is unique.

Flashlight by Lizi Boyd is very clever book that uses a mostly black and white palette to capture the night time exploration of a child in the forest.

Anno's Counting Book by Mitsumasa Anno is, I admit, technically not a wordless book but it's one that I remember loving when I was a kid so for old times sake, I'm including it here! My youngest has just discovered this book from our shelves and is fascinated by the changing scenes on each page.

The Lion & the Mouse by Jerry Pinkney is one that sat on my wishlist for a long time. I'd read a review that raved about the illustrations but only recently added this book to our collection. The review was right - the illustrations in this book, a re-telling of an Aesop's tale, are amazing.

Flotsam by David Wiesner was one book many of you recommended when I was searching for new wordless books one day and it doesn't disappoint! A day at the beach can be very exciting. Tuesday by the same author/illustrator is also worth a look.

The Snowman by Raymond Briggs is a classic from the late 1970s but hasn't really dated. A favourite in colder climates, it took many years for me to come across a copy here in Australia.

Flora and The Flamingo by Molly Idle was a 2014 Caldecott Honor book and as you flip through it, you can understand why. Flora and the Flamingo tells the tale of two friends through a beautifully innovative series of interactive flaps as they travel their way through their friendship.

Chalk by Bill Thomson has such a fantastic premise - three children discover a bag of magic chalk one rainy day in the playground. You can imagine the storytelling as their drawings come to life! With such stunning artwork, Chalk is one of my children's favourite wordless books!

Why add a wordless book to your library? For the many reasons that Jackie from My Little Bookcase explains perfectly in her post on Using and Enjoying Wordless Books. For me, it's because the illustrations become the star. Reading a normal picture book you don't always spend time looking at the artwork, turning the page as the words end.

But as Jackie points out, without words, there is no cue to turn the page leaving you more time to absorb the images in front of you.

I also like wordless books as they allow even the youngest child the opportunity to read a book to someone instead of being read to. They can decide on the narrative which can change from reading to reading. Wordless books invite storytelling.

Do you have any wordless books in your collection? What do you love about them?

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A collection of the most wonderful wordless picture books to share with your children and add to your bookshelf. There are so many great picture books to choose from - , fabulous read alouds, preposition rich texts, A to Zs of alphabet books but every book shelf needs to save some space for some of the most wonderful wordless picture books!

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Literacy Instruction for Students with Significant Disabilities

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Literacy Instruction for Students with Significant Disabilities

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http://literacyforallinstruction.ca

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Paths to Literacy: great resource for supporting students with multiple disabilities.

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Paths to Literacy: great resource for supporting students with multiple disabilities.

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By Deirdre Leech, Perkins School for the Blind

Because many commercially available books are not accessible to children with multiple disabilities, it is often necessary to adapt the existing book according to the needs of an individual student. Books may be purchased with braille text, but additional modifications may be necessary to make the book interesting and meaningful to a child with additional disabilities.

There are three basic ways in which to modify books:

Before You Begin

The first step before adapting a book is to determine the purpose of the book. Begin by asking yourself the following questions:

What are the educational objectives for reading this book? (e.g. concepts, specific vocabulary words, braille or print recognition, book handling skills, social interaction)

What are the child's interests?

What are the challenges the child faces in reading the book, including vision, hearing, cognition, and physical abilities?

Where will the child read the book? (at home, at school, with friends)

Will the child be reading this book alone?

Are other students in the class reading the same book?

Make the text accessible by using braille or large print.

Increase the contrast.

Simplify the content.

Simplifying the content and using symbols the student recognizes are helpful in adapting age-appropriate materials, such as magazines, to an individual's reading level.

Simplify the background. Take out busy or low contrast background and replace with a solid, high contrast background.

Highlight the main idea of the picture.

Highlight the picture with a preferred color so the child's eye is drawn to the picture. (This may be especially helpful for students with CVI.)

Provide tactile enhancement of the picture.

Use an object in place of the picture

Children with multiple disabilities may have difficulty holding the actual book or turning the pages, especially if they have a physical or motor impairment.

Make the pages thicker using cardboard.

Place tactile markers to help the child to locate specific parts of the book, as on the buttons pictured to the left.

Add "page fluffers" These are simply small squares of foam or cardboard attached to the corner of apage to make them easier to flip without skipping pages.

Mount the book on a book stand on a table.

Re-bind the book so that the book stays open more easily.

Laminate pages or place in protective sheets.

Create an electronic version of the book.

For more suggestions on modifying books, see also:

Every Child is a Potential Reader
By Patricia Weismer, MS. Ed. and Deirdre Leech, M.Ed., Perkins Deafblind Program, Perkins School for the Blind
Photos by: Megan Majors; New England Center Deafblind Project: In Touch Newsletter, Vol. 6, Issue 4, pp. 6-9 (February 2008)

Early Literacy and Students with Multiple Disabilities or Deafblindness webcast by Deirdre Leech, Perkins School for the Blind, with power point to accompany Perkins webcast.

Another helpful resource is the power point presentation Enhancing the Literacy Experience for Students who are Deafblind, also by Deirdre Leech, Perkins School for the Blind.

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Modifying Books for Students with Multiple Disabilities - Paths to Literacy

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By Deirdre Leech, Perkins School for the Blind Because many commercially available books are not accessible to children with multiple disabilities, it is often necessary to adapt the existing book according to the needs of an individual student.

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http://literacyforallab.ca/

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Shared reading example: Jane Farrall- it's hilarious!

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Shared reading example: Jane Farrall- it's hilarious!