How to Organize Your Picture Sorts

Having 72 sets of picture sorts and 6 copies of each, I thought long and hard about how I would organize them.  If you are wondering why I would have so many, my last blog post , "Why You Need Picture Sorts" may be of interest to you.  Once I identify my students' particular phonological needs, I create groups or pull them individually for RTI activities.  Picture sorts are not only a great way to introduce and practice sounds, but they also can be an important intervention in which teachers can target student’s specific letter or sound weaknesses.  

How Pinteresting!

Organizing picture sorts was vital because they have become such an integral part of my teaching and interventions.  One day I was casually Pinteresting (I know that's not a word, but we seem to be adding -ing to everything now, ie: googling), and I found my solution!  I saw a picture in which duct tape was put on the bottom of freezer bags and holes punched through them.  Perfect!  I copy each sort on 6 different colors (so kids don’t mix their set up when I am pulling a small group to work on the same skill), put them in a freezer bag, and bind them in a binder.  I have four binders: Consonants, blends and digraphs, short vowels and long vowels. It was a lot of time creating my own picture sorts, copying, and cutting.  You can see why I wanted to have a permanent system. Once the system is set up you are good for years to come.

In each bag, I have six sorts on six different colors.  That way, when I am working with a small group, each student knows which picture goes with which set.  

But that wasn't enough!

  

In case a picture turned up in the lost and found, I wanted to know what set it was missing from.  So I created my own sorts that were double-sided and had the title of the set it was from.  Then I printed all of the sorts out double sided and voila!: The perfect system that I don't have to recreate for years to come.  I even used the duct tape to label the outside of the binder for a cutesy-matching the duct tape inside.  

   

If I wanted (which I don't, but some people might), I could create a self checking center by highlighting the answer on the back.

If you are interested in obtaining picture sorts, you can download some free samples here:

Consonant Blend Picture Sort

Blends and Digraphs Picture Sort

    Short Vowel Picture Sort

    Long Vowel Picture Sort

If you are interested in purchasing 72 sets of picture sorts that cover all of the levels, you can find them here: 

Picture Sorting Center Bundle 72 sets of Literacy Centers/ RTI Interventions

We have already begun our year and it is off to a good start.  I wish you the best in your beginning of the year as well!  Thanks for stopping by!

Anna

Why You Need Picture Sorts

Picture sorts are a valuable tool in teaching beginning reading.  To start with, students are actively engaged in manipulating pictures during which, they are thinking about sounds and feeling for them in their mouths.  The more students become fluent in identifying how and where the sound is made in their mouth, the more fluent their knowledge of letters and sounds becomes. Picture sorts can be a valuable tool in whole group instruction (introduction), small group instruction (reinforcement/remediation), and individual instruction that targets a specific sound based on assessment.

Which Picture Sorts to Use

When introducing sounds, you can simply find a picture sort that matches the sound you are teaching.  However, picture sorts are not only a great way to introduce and practice sounds, but they also can be an important intervention in which teachers can target student’s specific letter or sound weaknesses.   Look at the assessment below.

The test is a 25 word list that has a variety of short vowels, beginning and ending blends and digraphs.  This test comes from Kathy Ganske's Word Journeys.  You can make your own test, just have a variety of words with these features. 

In the example, you can see that each time the student is asked to spell the sound of short u, he/she writes an o (drum, bump, much, mud) and also the opposite, when asked to spell the sound of o, writes u (chop).  In one word, the student uses both (rub).   This student clearly needs to become fluent in listening and identifying short o vs. short u.   That is when you pull out your O vs. U picture sorts and have the students work on this.   

What else could this student work on?  How about sorting pictures with /s/ vs. /sl/?  or /d/ vs. /dr/?  Also, when spelling grab, the student used an o.  Perhaps that gr blend was difficult and the student reverted back to an old confusion and could use some practice with that vowel combination. 

Drive-by PD

I created this poster to hang in the workroom of our school, so that teachers could see how to notice and use picture sorts.  I call it my Drive-by PD, because teachers just look at it in the workroom while they make copies.  Just like kids learn from pretty anchor charts, adults can too.  I wish all the PD's I had to attend were nothing but attractive anchor charts! 

The Assessments

You can use Kathy Ganske's assessments found in Word Journeys, which has a 25 word test for each stage of spelling, or I have made my own assessments with a variety of short vowels, blends and digraphs.  I also made an ending blend assessment for certain students who, every time they were presented with a word that contained a difficult ending blend, they would revert back to their short vowel mistakes that they had mastered in easier words! This informed me that they needed more practice solidifying their knowledge of certain short vowels and practice feeling for the short vowel in the presence of blends and digraphs.  This is why speech is related so much to beginning reading. 

Next Blog:  How to Organize Your Picture Sorts

   

If you are interested in obtaining picture sorts, you can download some free samples here:

Beginning Consonant Picture Sort

Consonant Blends Picture Sort

Short Vowel Picture Sort

Long Vowel Picture Sort

Download them here:

Consonant Blend Picture Sort

Blends and Digraphs Picture Sort

Short Vowel Picture Sort

Long Vowel Picture Sort

If you are interested in purchasing 72 sets of picture sorts that cover all of the levels, you can find them here: 

Picture Sorting Center Bundle 72 sets of Literacy Centers/ RTI Interventions

Thanks for stopping by!

Anna Sanders

Rhyming Picture Sort Center--Response to Intervention Activity

Hello Fellow Teachers,

I hope your year is going well and you are finding time to enjoy the holiday season.  I am not one of those amazing people who have their Christmas shopping done by Thanksgiving, so I am finding time here and there to shop. Although my outside lights and decorations have been out since last week, we have not gotten our Christmas tree up yet.  But today is the day!

Before I head out, I wanted to hurry up and post.  My blog posts are few and far between.  Mostly because of the business of teaching.  Although I don't have my own classroom anymore, my RTI position keeps me pretty busy.

Lately I have been exploring all of the RTI resources on the internet.  My search is in the early stages, but I have found some valuable websites.  For example, did you know that the Dibels benchmark assessments and progress monitoring tools are all FREE on the dibels website?  You can find them here:  https://dibels.uoregon.edu/.  Another fantastic website is http://www.easycbm.com/.

There are many phonological assessments available on the internet.  Some good testing resources can be found here  PAST test, and PAST answer sheet.  For more resources, Jen Jones at Hello Literacy has a wonderful blog post:Hello Literacy RTI Assessments.

Anyway, I just used the PAST test on a few students who are struggling to find out where their holes were in their phonological awareness knowledge and both had an issue with rhyming.  I wanted some quick rhyming activities, and while I had rhyming cut and paste picture sorts (Sample), I wanted a center that I could hand to a student to complete more quickly than cut and paste.  I also think my rhyming cut and past picture sorts may be too difficult when first teaching rhyming because they contain a lot of voiced vs. unvoiced sorts, and really, I need two distinct rimes for these students to start with and then maybe reinforce the skill with the cut and paste rhyming sorts later.

So I created these easier Rhyming Picture Sort Centers that start out easy and then have a few difficult ones at the end.

You can obtain a sample center here: Free Rhyming Picture Sort Center

If you are interested in all of the centers, you can find the set of 13 here:

Rhyming Picture Sort Centers

Thanks for stopping by.  Hopefully I will blog again soon ;)

Anna

Free Rhyming Cut and Paste

It has been a while since I created something new, but I felt like I needed a resource that only involved listening.  Rhyming is such an important skill.  When I was a literacy facilitator, an enormous amount of students who had difficulty reading, also had difficulty rhyming.  This experience really drove home the value of phonological and phonemic awareness.  So here is my latest creation, a book dedicated solely to rhyming. 

 

Click here for the Free Rhyming Cut and Paste Worksheet

If you are interested in the whole book, you can find it here:   

Cut and Paste Rhyming Pictures Short Vowels

Happy Spring!  

Anna

Developmental Spelling meet Picture Sorting

Do you love picture sorting as much as I do?  Don't you wish your students could spell the words after they get through sorting?  These 3 books are designed to do just that!

You may have seen my first two, but the 3rd book focuses on contrasting all the short vowel combinations while including blends and digraphs.

Picture sorting is an awesome way to help your students develop Phonemic Awareness.  Students manipulate the pictures by cutting, sorting and gluing them in categories.  Because they are pictures, students are forced to listen and feel for the sounds in their mouth.

I have had picture sorting a major part of my reading curriculum for some time.  However, I have always had the students spell the pictures by using their invented spelling because most picture sorting materials use any words.  Some have many syllables, and others are a higher level than a student who is picture sorting would be able to spell. I dreamed of someday creating all of my own picture sorts that would contain ONLY pictures that would be developmentally appropriate to spell.
I have finally created these.

If you are new to picture sorting, you must get into a routine of introducing the pictures before the activity.  Even simple pictures are not always interpreted the same by students.  However, it is well worth the effort, because in picture sorting, the student is active and in charge.  They are not being talked to, but they are listening to themselves and feeling the sounds in their own mouth instead of listening to the teacher while the teacher is in charge of the phonemic awareness activity/routine.

I feel the picture sorting is one of the biggest "bang for your buck" in the teaching of beginning reading.  Once you establish a routine of picture sorting, so many "aha" moments occur for both teachers and students.  As a teacher, when you observe a student saying a sound wrong, you understand that your student will not understand those letter combinations until they are making those sounds in their mouth correctly.  One of the most common examples is the word drive.  Many teachers know that students who are beginning to learn to read spell it JRIV.  This is because they are feeling it that way in their mouth.  But picture sorting gives you a chance to discuss it with students and not have the focus be on the letters, but on the formation of the sound in their mouth.  In addition, you are also providing another way of learning to spell by incorporating the kinesthetic association with their mouth.

Another way to focus on how the letters are formed are to teach kids about voiced and unvoiced consonant sounds.  For example, B and P are both made the same way except one is made with your voice and the other with a puff of air.  Highlighting this for your students will help them to become fluent in letter-sound correspondence and help them get through the letter-sound (letter-name) level more quickly.  I tried to highlight these combinations in the Word Family Cut Paste and Spell book.  Here is a sample page that focuses on ending voiced and unvoiced consonant sounds:

As an added bonus, students get practice cutting and pasting.  Fine motor skills lead to advancements in other areas as well.  I have noticed that when I teach handwriting solidly in the beginning of the year, that my students are much better writers by the end of the year content-wise.  This is because fluency in handwriting frees up brain space so that students can concentrate on what they are writing and not how they are writing it.  Don't let anyone tell you handwriting is not important.   Interested in the link between handwriting and quality writing?  Google "handwriting fluency" and you will see that there are many studies that link it with writing quality.  Click HERE for one good article. But I am digressing.  Just know that LOTS of cutting and pasting are good for students.

Here are some free samples of the books.  I hope you like them!

Book 1  Cut, Paste, and Spell Word Families Mini Sample

Book 2 Cut, Paste, and Spell CVC Words--Contrasting All Vowels Mini Sample

Book 3 Cut, Paste, and Spell-- Blends and Digraphs--Contrasting All Vowels Mini Sample


To purchase the full books, please visit my TPT store here: 

Cut, Paste & Spell Picture Sorting Books 1, 2 & 3 Combo Pack Phonemic Awareness

They are also sold separately if you are interested in a particular one.

Thanks for stopping by! 

10 more days of school for me!  How about you?


Wishing you the best summer!

Anna