Print Like a Jedi Master

This has come out of a place of needing my students to print neatly and actually making it happen. Through daily 5 minute board work lessons & cool pages, my students really are printing like Jedi Masters. I have found that some kids don't "see" ~~or have not learned to look at~~ the lines so they are not able to use them. Seeing, naming, and using the lines is key. In class we call them sky line, tree line, dirt line.

How many times do you get crazy “k”s like this?

Or worse, the ALWAYS capital K... drives me nuts too.

These cards HELP.

Because we name the lines, we have a common vocabulary.

I can talk about the dirt line (bottom line) and how I want that k to touch the dirt line. Or in the case of a lower case g, I can remind the kids, they don't start at the sky line. They start at

the tree line and go down into the roots!

During 5 minute board work....

nobody can hide at their desk forming letters incorrectly.

I can all of them!

VICTORY!!!

After I model, help, and help some more,

we move on to the practice pages.

Here are samples of the pages included!

Each page has the letter inside real words with a picture clues.

Words are kept short to make them readable to young eyes.

By the end of the alphabet I have transitioned into sentences.

As a bonus, I included the 4 diagraphs!

I named the groups based on how the letter is formed. And I created “stay sharp” pages to review. We do one page once a week, and let me tell you they work hard on these pages because neat work means a skittle. If I have a child who is making the letters p, q, j, y, and g incorrectly I can hand them the " roots letters " review page for homework. This is also why they work hard on review pages because no one wants extra homework.