A joined up lesson - making the most of students' flashcards

Making a learning record with flashcards

I'm a firm believer of doing more with less - and a massive fan of good text books. Students need something familiar in the hands/bags, a structure they can grab onto and a bit of a routine they can enjoy diverting from...not glued to turning the next page at all, but able to thumb back through recognisable patterns, structres, chunks & lexical sets. And then have the confidence to be able to close the book, with learning internalised, push their English skills into deeper water with friends to help & to challenge.

Oxford Phonics World textbooks have a lovely set of flashcards tucked away at the back, which are a great resource to expand learning; introduce or review words (in this case CVC patterns), make sets or mix everything up! 

• Teacher tip = have each student mark each of their cards with their own favourite colour (important these are different, so you can unmix easily when you play games etc) before cutting them out. And give each student a ziplock bag with their name on, to prevent losses!

Here we went at 16 recently studied words (shoert i and e sounds). Quiet time to cut carefully = also time to recall the pictures/sounds (which are on the reverse side). Many ways to review at this stage - teacher-led or students challenging each other etc. 

Matching & categorising: Wordwall

There's a 'blank' picture dictionary at the back of the classbook, which I love, because the artwork is the same, but it is in alphabetical order (not by unit)...a subliminal dictionary skill implanted! My approach with strong students = take a card, find it in the picture dictionary, and 'do your best' spelling it (after you've sounded it out) logically. Then check on the back & high fives, noticing a consistent pattern with the middle vowel sound/spelling. Students can do this together & correct/reinforce/referee each other (including comments on letter writing/legibility!) or competitively. Either way, teacher is passive but actively monitoring output carefully & encouraging constantly :)

Using wordwall as a follow up - I love this as there are so many different formats of game you can select per set of words (in this case). The thinking bit = different images, but clearly the same item. Creating these sets, you can add audio - male/female voice, lots of dialects to chose from. Be careful that you use a consistent sound that you want your students to model/mimic (US, Kiwi or Scottish ones that bend vowel sound? Or consonant sounds that disappear into glottal stops?!). You can have wordwall 'pronounce' all your cards, both sides, or just the one. Or none. Think about what you want your learners to do!