April 2022 - Pure Joy Teaching

Handwriting Cards 4 sets Pirate Letters

Easy letter formation instruction with four sets of illustrated card and posters.

Orton Gillingham Style Illustrated Handwriting worksheets, letter strips, and letter cards.

Lowercase letter support to stop letter reversal errors. Easy to follow letter groups. Make handwriting fast and simple to remember by grouping similar letter shapes, making a muscle memory link.

These 4 different letter groups make a wonderful classroom display and reference for handwriting instruction.

Letter Group 1

1. r, n, m, h, b, p – The letter /r/ is seaweed on the sand, the pirates trace the /r/ shape and that helps to make the other letters in this group. These are the dive down, slide up, and hook letters.

Dark blue water on the bottom of the handwriting cards.

This first group helps teach students to start the letters at the top
Left to right direction of reading and writing

Letter Group 2

2. c, a, g, d, q, o, s, e – Letter c is half a coconut. The pirates trace around the coconut in the sand to make the curved letters in this group. The /c/ curved letters share the same starting point. Letter e was added to this group because it shares the same c shape. (Follow the interaction between a pirate and a monkey. It is a funny story in the book for letter /e/.)

Tallgrass on the bottom of the cards.

Letter Group 3

3. i, j, l, t, f, k – Letter i, are tracks made by turtle-hatchlings. The pirates copy the straight-line letters in the sand.

Light blue water on the bottom of the cards.

Letter Group 4

4. v, w, y, x, z, u – The letter /v/, traces around a shark’s tooth. These are the slanted line letters. Letter u was added to this group. (funny story in the book for letter /u/ and pirate underwear)

Tree trunks on the top of these cards.

Print your own set of letter strips. Great for daily practice, intervention, and more….

c pirate letters - pure joy teaching letter strips — © Pure Joy Teaching

Using the Letter c worksheet and letter strips is a great way to teach letters c, a, g, & d. Make a tactile handwriting adventure with a sand tray.

Letter g is just the letter a with a monkey’s tail. In the story, the monkey jumps down from the tree to grab the coconut.

Pirate Book Series Starts with the Letter r.

Starting the r letter set is what the pirates do. This is the best letter to start with, it sets kids up for the correct starting and stopping pencil strokes. It helps create good writing habits. This letter needs to start at the top, not the bottom. It has the same shape and pattern as the often tricky letter b. (r, h, b, they all go the same way)

Letter strips with pirate theme TPT

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Get your set of cards and worksheets HERE

Books on Amazon

Handwriting letter strips with Mnemonics embedded images TPT

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R-Controlled Clipcards Trigraphs

The letter /ere/ can make lots of sounds. This is a tricky spelling to teach. It is mostly one of the reasons the students start to struggle with sight words. Even for students who are good at decoding, this is a very tricky thing to understand the r controlled clip cards have helpful mnemonic images for the sound connection.

These R-controlled clip cards focus on the five sounds: ear, air, oar, er, and are. Often found in tricky sight words. Students may encounter this spelling pattern in their text long before the r-controlled trigraph is formally taught.

These clip cards can be a useful bridge or introduction to the skill knowledge.

Dual-colored spelling clip cards can be found HERE.

Teaching bossy r can be easy to explain until you get to the trigraphs. Then the rules are gone and some students struggle with reading and spelling the homophones like: stair and stare.

These mnemonics were created to provide visual pictures to help students remember and relate to the words. You can find the whole set HERE.

The spelling clip cards highlight the tricky trigraphs in red, with the question “Sounds like?” above three images to guide students.

Clip Cards – Often Tricky Sight Words

there sight word – air sound © Pure Joy Teaching

This can help students who are struggling with the words that are commonly confused.

1. The “ear” Sound– Examples

The “ear” sound often makes the “ear” sound, like in the words “ear”, “bear”, and “clear”. This combination of letters can appear at the beginning, middle, or end of words. Here are a few examples:

Ear – The part of the body used for hearing.
Bear – A large animal or to carry something.
Clear – Free from obstruction or easy to understand.

2. The “air” Sound Trigraph -Examples

The “air” sound is commonly found in words such as “air”, “chair”, and “fair”. This sound can also be spelled with the letter combinations “are” or “ere”, as in “care” or “flare”. Here are a few examples:

Air – The atmosphere that we breathe.
Chair – A piece of furniture for sitting.
Fair – Just or impartial, or an event with rides and games.

r controlled trigraphs ear, air, er © Pure Joy Teaching

There are 100 words in the set. Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT) is free to join. Follow the links to my shop Pure Joy Teaching and get your download of these R clip cards today.

R-Controlled Trigraphs

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R-Controlled Trigraphs

Teaching the hardest bossy-r lesson just became easier.

R controlled Trigraphs Mnemonic Bossy r Booklet, spelling help for sounds air, ear,

Mnemonic pictures are a great way to help teach sound sorting for the various tricky spellings of the five bossy r trigraphs.

air, ear, oar, er, r . These 5 sounds can be spelled in lots of ways.

This booklet has 35 Mnemonic pictures for the vowels and bossy r – to help create a visual picture that can remind the student how the word is spelled.

Find this item here on Teachers Pay Teachers

Bind these pages together with a binding machine, rings, or slip cards into an old photo brag book for a durable teaching resource.

Print as single pages and slip them into the photo brag book.

Two-hole punch with rings for side-by-side readers.

Word lists on the cards are dual colors with the selected trigraph highlighted in red ink for easy visual reference.

This is a great way to teach homophones, with all the different spellings of the r sounds – stare, stair, fare, fair.

Now includes poster size.

R-Controlled Uno Game

R-controlled UNO-style card is a great way students can learn to read the spelling patterns with confidence and have fun at the same time. Have Pure Joy Teaching.

This is so much fun learning with a bossy R controlled uno game.

Students think it is great! They want to play this game over and over.

Fun Uno-Style Educational Game

It helps students with reading R-controlled words

and they love playing it.

Playing Cards are grouped by colors for similar spellings

ar – or – ur – er – ir – ‘air’- ‘ear’ – ‘oar’

15 different Homophones (including a list with definitions)

158-word cards & 16 action cards (skip, draw 2, draw 4, wild)

The red and black text makes the decodable parts stand out.

Game Play Options

We play with cards face up, and it helps to improve their reading skills. This gives the whole group a chance to help each other when they spot a match, and it keeps everyone’s attention on reading the words.

To see the full description and list of words follow the link.

Teacher tip – The colored groups make it easy sort and to use these as flashcards.

Group By Sounds /er/

Often I will introduce just the /er/ sounds together ( er, ur, ir) and students are surprised at how quickly they can read now that they know how to decode the 3 different spellings that all make the same sound.

This game can be found in a group with other games.

Group By the /ar/ and /or/

The r-controlled /ar/ is one of the few times in English that a consonant letter gets to say it’s name. That makes is special. With the help of the silent vowel /a/ the consonant /r/ can now say it’s name. I like to introduce /ar/ and /or/ together and we play the game with just those two sounds, then combine all the cards to play the complete game.

R-Controlled Trigraphs

Flipbook decodable reader

Fun reading with a flipbook

Capitalization and full stop flip book — Sentence reading © Pure Joy Teaching

Large print CVC and sight word decodable reader. Simple 3-word sentences. The inside cover has a list of short and long vowel words for quick lessons and review.

Capitalization & Full Stops

Short sentences are great for teaching the basics of capitalization, and full stops at the end.

Check out the link below for this and more flipbook-style resources.

Find it HERE on Teachers Pay Teachers.

CVC builder Hot dogs dramatic play easy booklet

X Pirate Letters: Handwriting Storybook for learning the lowercase letters v, w, y, x, z & u.

Orton-Gillingham Style Handwriting in a storybook to make learning the letters a fun adventure.

This is the fourth book in the handwriting series.

The pirate’s lowercase letter adventure is coming to a close with one of their favorite letters the X.

Of course, because the letter X would traditionally mark the spot where the treasure is located.

In this book, they will learn the slanted letters: v, w, y, x, v, and surprise the last vowel the letter u. The letter u is a very funny part of the story and it includes the vowel sounds are also a type of treasure for the pirates as they learn to write. Thanks to the helpful parrot that flies by.

In this storybook, the lowercase letters are grouped to help improve muscle memory and indicate a common starting point. The pictures illustrate a sensory experience of writing in the sand to stimulate the brain for learning. With letters grouped by similar starting points and slanted downstrokes, it can speed up the handwriting process and improve letter print recognition for reading. Images of the letters share the same shape to help avoid common letter reversal errors. Special attention to paid to the vowel letter, by a colorful bird. Paired with a fun and memorable story to engage the interests of young students.

This is a perfect book to use with sand tray letters.

The whole pirate adventure is available in one storybook on Amazon. The Pirate Letters: Lowercase Handwriting Storybook.

This is a wonderful way to teach handwriting in the Orton-Gillingham style letter groups.

Handwriting worksheets and cards for this book are available HERE on Teachers Pay Teachers.

C Pirate Letters Sand Tray

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