Here are another 4 packs of picture flashcards/wall words for the phonemes CK, EA (long e sound), AU and EW (click on the pictures above to access the files you want). Hopefully some or all of them will be useful to you!

As I've been making these packs, many of the files have become quite a bit longer than they were originally. Depending on the kinds of words that tend to have a given phoneme in them, I've added 'ing' words, compound words, words ending in 'y', etc, so that teachers have the option of using these flashcards to reinforce different types of decoding strategies, word endings, spelling patterns, etc.

However, when I've personally downloaded free files from the internet, or bought packs on Teachers Pay Teachers, I've sometimes made the mistake of printing everything out, thinking that more must be better.

Sometimes that's been fine - but other times, I've ended up with too many bits and pieces, because I haven't really thought through how I was going to use the resources I've printed out.

Hopefully, with the way that I've organised these files, that won't happen to you! As teachers, we know our own classes. With respect to the different kinds of words in each of the files I've been posting, you'll know whether certain words are too easy, too hard or just right for your own kids. I've tried, as much as possible, to make it so that you can easily print out just the right kind of words for your class, while skipping pages that contain words that are too easy/too hard.

I do understand, though, that sometimes it's nice to print it all out (I suspect that's what I'll be doing!) - and if you choose to do that, the words are already organised by difficulty level for you, so if you don't use the compound words (for example) this year, they are ready to go if you need them in subsequent years.

Now - off to do a bit of 'Back to School' planning! I hope your plans are further along than mine are...

A new set of OW (as in snow) flashcards/wall words are ready (picture is clickable as well). Hope you find them useful! All of the OW words in this pack make the long O sound. I will (hopefully soon) get around to making another set of OW words - but next time, they'll be OW as in 'Owl' flashcards.

As I was making these cards, however, I found myself re-using clipart images. Clipart (especially clipart you can use for files posted on the Internet) can be difficult to find - and cute clipart is even harder to source! So when you have attractive images that fit a variety of words, you tend to re-use them.

I had wondered about this as I was making the cards, but then I got to thinking about the different strategies we use when teaching little ones to decode words. One of the strategies children learn and use frequently when they are early readers is 'using pictures to help you figure out words'.

This is a useful strategy, of course - but how often do your kiddos look at the picture and read 'rabbit' when the word is 'bunny', or read 'boat' when the word is 'ship' (etc, etc)? Looking at pictures will only get children so far - they need to be paying attention to the letters (and more than just initial letters!) in their words as well.

As I've been making these flashcards, then, and re-using clipart, I've started to re-use images quite deliberately. In the OW file, for example, there is a picture of a firefly for the word 'glow'. I've used this same firefly in the IGH package to represent 'bright'. And when I get to the I-E (Magic e) package, I'll use it again for 'firefly'. Similarly, the whale image I used in the WH flashcards does double duty in the OW package when it represents 'blowhole' (to be fair, I've also included an arrow pointing to the blowhole, to help make it clearer!).

I plan to make this a feature of how I use these flashcards to teach new phonemes - as a class, we'll have a look at how the same picture can be used to illustrate different things. Then we'll relate that to our reading, and how important it is to use the pictures along with the letters in a new word to figure words out when they get tricky.

I always find that there are so many different parts to developing literacy skills in our kiddos that it's hard to fit everything in. As I've been creating these flashcards/word wall cards, I've seen that many of these phonemes lend themselves to teaching compound words. Doing 2 things at once is always a winner when you are a teacher!

The IGH, EW and AW packs above (all pictures are clickable) have compound words (grouped together) included. If your kiddos are ready for them, you can choose to use the compound word cards when you teach that phoneme. If your kids aren't quite there, there are plenty of simpler words to start with. Compound words are a great way to develop decoding skills, as they highlight for our kids how helpful it is to use the 'find a smaller word' strategy.

OU words didn't seem to lend themselves as easily to teaching compound words, but at the end of the file, I've included 3 words ending in Y (cloudy, bouncy, mouthy) - that ending Y making the long e sound can be quite tricky (more so for spelling than for reading, in my experience). The 3 base words (cloud, bounce, mouth) are also included. These should provide useful reinforcement of this phoneme, although I also have a completed pack of flashcards for the Y (long E) phoneme as well: