I totally just DIY'ed one of these...

[eloquacious]

...http://www.amazon.com/Now-Im-Reading-Slide-Flashcards/dp/1601690746/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1318546152&sr=8-1

 

and it was super simple. Off to write up a tutorial/make a printable template in Illustrator. :)

 

The best part is that it would only take one or two pieces of cardstock, depending on whether you'd like the slider to be a contrasting color. I used one piece of card stock, but my slider is a sentence strip. There was enough of the card stock left for a slider, though.

 

I also only used one laminating pouch. (5mm, but 3mm would do, too.)

 

Mine is imperfect, as it was a spur of the moment idea and I eyeballed it, but with a proper template it would be better. (For instance, the left side of mine is taped shut because I didn't think in advance to put a fold-over tab there as I did on top.)

 

For now I'm using the printable words from readinglessons.com, but I'll make up some to go along with it in our Montessori colors to match the movable alphabet/magnetic letters we have, then print those on card stock. (The sample is a cut out taped to an index card.)

 

Sorry for the lame iPhone pictures, but I was too excited to share this before the boys woke up to bother getting up to get the Nikon. :)

[Julie Smith]

Neat idea for teaching reading.

[eloquacious]

Incidentally, many phonics curricula also use short phrases, or "captions" as the UK Letters and Sounds documents put it, to build fluency before students are asked to read full sentences. Putting such phrases/captions into a longer slider like this one can in effect turn them into something like the "Reading Pyramids" in Dolores Hiskes' Phonics Pathways and Reading Pathways.

 

I need to adjust the dimensions on both of these. I used a 4x6 index card as my original guide for the single word one, but I think for my printable and tutorial I'll size them both to work with either sentence strips or 3x5 index cards with the top bit removed. That way people can use the words/phrases I create, but also can make their own inexpensively.

 

Here is a mock-up of the longer "phrase slider," though as I said it's a bit tall for the sentence strip I used as an example. Also, ignore the handwriting. For some reason I can write incredibly neatly with chalk on a chalkboard but otherwise I'm lost. (Must be my teacher training ... we had chalkboards in Baltimore.)

[Jean in Newcastle]

I did something like that when my kids were little. It worked very well and they enjoyed it. Somehow having the card slider made it more fun for them. :001_smile::001_smile::001_smile: