Category: UFLI Ideas

How to keep your UFLI supplies organized

Whether you are just starting with UFLI or you have been doing this for a while, we all can learn from each other.

Must-haves to help the teacher with UFLI

When you’re teaching a lesson and you have the attention of your students, every moment counts. You do not want to be caught unprepared or, worse, need to get up and search for something that is lost.

I taught reading intervention for many years. I found that the things that I used daily needed to be within reach and organized. Teachers often ask about supplies and must-haves for using the UFLI Foundations on Facebook posts. So, I have put together a few of my ideas. I hope that they are helpful to you.

Large coil binders were a great way for me to print out all my decodable stories and the roll and reads. The binding keeps them in order and easy to locate quickly. This also made them reusable. For the loose copies, I use the large display books. I can fit 10 or more in each pocket. It keeps them in order and handy near my reading table. Magazine holder turned sideways on my shelf. They are great for holding our blending boards.

The blending boards are metal whiteboards. We have 4 different sets; each set has more letters, progressing up to my highest readers. This picture is set 2 for my students that are on lesson 12. We have 5 to a set, 4 student boards, and one teacher board.

Having the boards pre-loaded and ready is helpful. It took a lot of time to set up with printing, cutting, and magnets, but it paid off. After we use them, the students return the letters to the top and put the clear plastic L pocket cover over the boards. The L pocket keeps the magnets on the board and allows me to store the boards upright. Extra magnet letters are in the smaller box to the side, for when we need to add another letter. Or when one letter temporarily goes missing.

In the ULFI toolbox the printable blending boards are called Word Work Mat. Or you can use the digital word work mat. We used customized mats in the picture above. The TPT link is below.

Vowel Importance

If your taking the time to print them on paper. My suggest is make the vowels a special color. My student were struggling with the vowel sound and understanding the importance of vowels in the words. My custom blending board for word work was a way to reach them on a visual level and highlighting the difference between vowels and consonants.

We love our roll and reads. We use them in a lot of different ways. This is a two-player game. Competitive 4-in-a-row reading. Each player reads a word and places the colored chip down. If the player misreads the word, the other player gets to put down their chip instead.

Printable Resources

The UFLI Toolbox is full of great stuff. There is a lot of free stuff in the printable Resources. Check there first. A lot of the same stuff is on TPT with a bit more flash and customized stuff. I made my own blending boards to fit with the decodables books we were using for ESL. Regular and with picture-embedded tiles for the language learners that match my handwriting letter sheets.

Blending board options

I found a whiteboard that stands up. Instead of using the flat whiteboards. From Kmart.

It was nice for a hands-free option. The extra heart tile was added to practice the heart words. We put the heart over the letter that is tricky. ♥️ The girls loved that. One boy wanted a star instead. ⭐

Tabs are helpful

♥️ Love the UFLI Manual. I’m trying to keep it in good shape. I applied a clear cover of contact paper to the front and back. I also made large tabs for my book and files. They were printed on 11×17 ledger-size paper, laminated, and cut.

These were printed on standard size paper 8.5×11 . There keep my phonogram cards organized.

This is what they look like printed on colored paper. Carefully cut, you get to cards out of one sheet of paper. They can be used for heart words or anything else that you need to be sorted. They are on TPT UFLI Tabs with lesson #’s

Small group items organized. The small containers for colored clips with lids that are attached. They came from a take-out restaurant. Sauce cups or something. The dice are in a small container and taped shut. To keep the dice from getting lost. Kids just shake it and read the number. No more chasing the dice all over the table and floor.

The white electrical tape and thin black marker are for fast labeling of games and books.

The picture on the right is a lot of my personal designs for visual phonics and word lists. We call them spelling cheat sheets. The colorful mnemonics help the students make sound connections to the letters embedded in the shapes of the letters. Vowel teams, digraphs, trigraphs, and suffixes. I have put spelling rules and word lists on the back. They are grouped by the UFLI scope & sequence plus some extra spelling bonuses that are not covered by UFLI. The kids love them. I like convenience and visuals.

They are on TPT. I have them printed as Large displays for my lessons and smaller for groups.

Many people have asked for handwriting practice. That aligns to ULFI.

I have made these worksheets to match the lesson numbers, articulation images, handwriting, heart words, and the decodable words. Includes lowercase and capital letter matching.

Phonics Articulation Roll, fill, trace, and read A-Z UFLI lesson #’s

These sheets have a little bit of each lesson plus the handwriting and the sound articulation altogether in one place.

ULFI does have free heart words on their site. I love the toolbox. They are on the printable resources page. Many people have asked for the lesson numbers on the cards. I agree; it does make it a little bit easier. So I made some for myself and indicated if it was an irregular word or a temporary irregular decodable word on the card.

The lesson numbers and notes help me to stay organized and quickly explain to students that this true heart word or a temporary irregular word because we have not covered that lesson yet. Great for Orthographic Mapping.

For more sight words and orthographic mapping by sounds and spelling rules, I created a book to help keep me organized.

What about comprehension?

Comprehension using comic boxes gets the student willing to re-read the text repeatedly and draw it out. This also breaks up the text into smaller chunks of reading. Some students look at a text-only page and push it away, saying, “That is too many words”. However, that same text put into boxes is easier to take on.

Get the FREE UFLI Comics on TPT. Pure Joy Teaching

I love using games to get students to practice reading. This is the best one for the foundational skills that students need, and they love to play it.

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