This post is all about teaching reading, and it also contains a FREE alphabet printing activity for you to download!
You may have seen my recent post about my HUGE teaching dilemma last year: a new teaching partner who had no experience with teaching primary math! How could I make sure that my new partner stayed on track without spending HOURS talking about math lessons, planning, intervention and reporting?
My solution? I had the idea to make a whole year of paperless daily warm-up lessons that my partner could simply project onto our (non-interactive) white board each day to guide the lessons. Kind of a simple idea…
And guess what? It WORKED!
Each day we just projected the next lesson in the pack to begin the math period. Sometimes it was review, and often it was introducing a new concept. It was so fast and easy that we began showing the lessons outside of math time, too – whenever we had extra time during the day. I couldn’t believe how much extra math practice we fit in that way.
So the next logical question seemed to be…. what about READING lessons?
MY SOLUTION TO ORGANIZING READING LESSONS
How could I do the same thing for teaching the alphabet, and phonics, and guided reading strategies?! And what about phonemic awareness, sentence writing, sight word fluency and comprehension?
Yup, I did the same thing. I made hundreds of activities – this time for READING – that we could project onto our white board each day to guide our lessons.
It took a LOT of work up front to prepare all of the lessons, but it organized the WHOLE year, and provided NO-prep daily practice no matter who was there teaching that day – even a sub could do it!
And think of all the paper and time we saved after teaching hundreds of lessons WITHOUT having to make a single copy.
Each day we projected the pages – sometimes one page, and sometimes a bunch of pages – and invited students to come up and fill in answers or think about and discuss the concepts.
Our students really loved filling in the answers, and they learned from each other. Often, I could put up a new activity and just let them figure it out themselves – such great collaborative learning!
INTERVENTION
Just as with our math lessons, I made an Intervention Binder to use for quick one-on-one lessons. I also made assessment pages to use with the whole class – just to be sure we were all on track.
I put all of the pages into plastic page protectors so they could be used for quick intervention lessons using dry erase markers.
Targeted Practice For Students
All of the lessons that were projected could also be printed out, so, for students in need of targeted practice, I printed out a small practice booklet for them to do in class or at home with parent support. Sometimes I printed a copy of an activity for the whole class to do together, such as printing.
As a whole class, we began with lessons about the alphabet, letter names, letter formation, and letter sounds, as in the picture above. (See blue download button below to grab it!)
Then we moved on to activities for phonemic awareness: rhyming, syllables, onset and rime, and manipulating phonemes.
Next came basic CVC words, and all the phonics rules. Later we moved on to sight word fluency, sentence writing and comprehension. You can see some of our activities listed below!
PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS TOPICS
There are 8 main topics I chose to cover phonological awareness in a comprehensive way.
See below to get a closer look at some of the pages from the daily warm-up lessons and the Intervention Binder!
Alphabet
Letter Sounds
Phonemic Awareness
Phonics
Sight Word Fluency
Sentence Writing & Comprehension
If you’d like to use the same pages shown in this post, you can see it by clicking HERE. (650+ pages)
If you need the same idea, but for MATH, you can see it by clicking HERE. (1700+ pages)
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Don’t leave without downloading your FREE Alphabet Pictures printing set!
It includes a page for all 26 letters of the alphabet!
My students LOVED turning the letters into pictures, and it was a great way to reinforce letter sounds and creativity!
Looking for more teaching ideas? You can see everything on one page by click any of the categories below.
STEM, Growth Mindset and SOCIAL SKILLS
Art History & Seasonal Crafts
Phonics & Word Work
Sentence Building Kits
Fairy Tales Sets
Poetry Sets
Sight Words Sets
Writing Prompts
1st Grade Math Full Year MegaBundle 
Fairy Tales STEM Literacy Bundle 
Secret Sentences Bundle 
Do you have samples available to show what you “turned” the other letters into for the drawing part of the Alphabet Pictures book?
Hi Cindy,
I don’t have more specific examples. The students were challenged to make the pictures themselves with their own ideas. Thanks for asking!