It is our favorite time of the year!

Back-to-School

It is the time of the year when we stock up on new school supplies, get ready to see students we haven’t seen all summer, and prepare to jump back into what we love most - teaching our students!

Today, we are sharing with you our TOP 5 back-to-school items that are total MUST-HAVES for us.

1. Whiteboards & Dry Erase Markers

When it comes to working with students, we’ve found that if we have nothing else, a whiteboard and dry-erase markers are a total MUST for us.

Personally, we like the 11x14 board because it gives a little extra space but you could go with an 8.5x11 if it fits better in your bag. We also love pairing our whiteboard with these double-sided dry-erase markers. Students love having both colors and using them to differentiate vowels and consonants can be a great instructional strategy!

We use the whiteboard for all kinds of things including writing our review words, marking words, building words, the auditory drill, spelling words, and more.

2. Grapheme Magnets

One of the materials we’ll use with students to build words are these grapheme magnets.

These magnets use a color-coded system to help students visually see how the different letters, phonograms, and morphological patterns work together to create words. This is a great way to support students’ knowledge of their phonics patterns and concepts, review previously taught patterns, incorporate multisensory instruction, and keep students engaged!

3. Phonogram Cards

When we are introducing students to a new phonics pattern, we love using phonogram drill cards!

On the front of the card, students see the color-coded pattern, a keyword and image, and dots to represent the number of sounds the letter/pattern can make. This allows us to explicitly teach the new pattern.

Then, as students learn the patterns, we’ll flip the cards over and show them the back. This side includes only the letter/pattern and the number of sounds it can make.

These cards make for a great sound-drill warm-up because you can easily differentiate the task by flipping the cards over.

If you are looking for a phonogram deck, you can find these by >>clicking here!<<

4. Games

If you know our team, then you know we love using games in our instruction!

Not only do they keep students engaged, but they also let us review a number of different skills.

Whether we are matching words to their syllable type, reviewing vowel sounds, reading at the word level, or pulling the game cards to target skills like vocabulary (can you define this word?) or writing (write a sentence using this word), games are our favorite way to review skills with our students.

Click here to learn more about all of our favorite phonics games.

5. Visual Anchors

Our last back-to-school “must-have” is visual anchors!

We use visual anchors to help students organize their thoughts (check out our favorite comprehension anchor charts here and our vocabulary framework bookmarks here), their notes & annotations (we love these annotation sticky notes), and different processes like the before, during, and after reading process, the 3-step writing process, and the 5-step executive functioning process.

So, there you have it!

These are our TOP 5 MUST-HAVE literacy intervention materials for back to school. Are your favorite materials included?

If you are looking for additional games, visual anchors, card decks, workbooks, or other materials to use in your instruction this year, we’d love to invite you to check out our shop!

Click Here to Check Out Our Shop

*Note - This post contains affiliate links.  While they will not affect the cost for you, we may get a small commission from them. We promise that we only share materials that we use and love!