Lucy Letter and William Word

I first "met" Lucy Letter and William Word years ago when I attended a conference by my sweet friend Kim Adsit from KinderGals.

They are fly swatters all dressed up with a mouth cut out!

*(You have to excuse my Lucy Letter and William Word - their hair is a little thin as they are several years old! LOL)*

Super easy to make!

Lucy Letter has a small mouth and is perfect for finding letters.

William Word has a larger mouth and can find words.

They hang just on the side of my easel.

I like to write out my poems on chart paper as the children can come back and use these pointers throughout the day to read it with a friend. You can also project it onto your Bright Links board and use the pointers to find letters/words and then circle them.

So how do we use them?

I introduce a new poem to the class each Monday. I start by asking if anyone can read the title or knows any letters/words in the title. Then I read/sing/chant the poem to them and point (using a simple pointer) to each word to track the print. We read it again but this time the children can chime in with me.

We do this a few times and I have them read it in different ways:

- regular voice

- baby voice

- Papa bear voice (deep)

- loud

- soft

- whisper

- etc.

I then take out Lucy Letter (she's easier to start with as it's only a letter) and ask students to come up and point to a specific letter in the poem. I've also done it where I have a bag of letters (large plastic ones work great) and I reach in and choose a letter and they have to find it (perfect for the beginning of the year where students might not know what letter you are talking about!).

William Word is great for focusing on sight words. I don't have particular sight words we focus on each week. Rather, I take the poem I want to use for the week and choose sight words from there.

We always start the year with easy ones (I, an, the) and move along. But if I want to challenge some students (especially my Year 2 students!) I'll ask them to find a more difficult word (i.e. I'm thinking of a 4 letter word, this word has 3 syllables, etc.).