Creating Budget-Friendly Educational Flashcards

 

Creating fun, interactive and budget-friendly educational resources for your home or classroom can be a task! Sourcing material, dedicating the time and effort to plan and execute one’s ideas can all make this seem like a daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be! You can create amazing educational resources on a budget using everyday items like paper or bristol board and stationery.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to create reading flashcards for your student or child. 

What are Flashcards? 

A study or memorization tool, flashcards have information on one or both sides. Students of all ages can learn effectively and efficiently by using flashcards. They might be simple or come in many colours. When studying, some students choose to use different coloured flashcards for various themes or subject areas. 

Why Flashcards? 

Students who learn best visually, tactilely, or kinesthetically may find flashcards to be particularly helpful. Putting information on flashcards and then reviewing it is a fundamental revision practice that everyone may use. Many pupils benefit from the dynamic learning style that flashcards offer. Flashcards can be used in a variety of effective ways to improve classroom instruction.

1) Accumulate numerous pages/sheets of bristol board in various colours. Ensure you have crayons, colour pencils or markers. 

2) Cut the paper/sheets of bristol board into smaller (flashcard-sized) pieces. 

3) Use the flashcards to write words that the child is currently learning or about to start learning. Space out the letters based on how the word is pronounced. 

For example, camp should be ‘c am p’. 

Having the letters separated like this guides the student on how to sound out the word. Once they are able to sound it out this way, the next step would be blending the sounds to form the word. 

This can be done with several words. Examples: 

D am p - damp 

L am p - lamp 

St am p - stamp 

St o p 

Note that in the words beginning with ‘st’ the letters ‘s’ and ‘t’ are placed together, this is because they are pronounced together or as one.

Some more examples:

B oa t 

G oa t 

Fl oa t

Here we can see the vowel digraph ‘oa’. The digraph ‘fl’ is also seen and in both cases, the letters pronounced together or as one, are written separately for ease of pronunciation for the student. Ensure students are introduced to the necessary phonic rules when encountering new words. 

At The Caribbean Academy for Reading Intervention and Development, we offer an Individual Reading Assistance Program that assists struggling readers to build skills in: 

• Sight words and high-frequency words 

• Sounds recognition 

• Reading comprehension 

• Letter and word recognition 

• Phonics and phonemic awareness 

Our Reading Assistance Programme is designed to teach the foundational skills of reading to children with significant academic challenges, empowering them to achieve grade-level proficiency. Our dedicated tutors help struggling readers understand the basic mechanics of reading and help them develop critical reading skills that will help them develop a lifelong love of reading. 

Target Audience: Struggling readers between the ages of 5 years to 10 years. 

Persons interested in our Individual Reading Assistance Program can contact us at 1-868-474-9819. 

Chrystal Murray has a passion for imparting knowledge and adding value to the lives of others.

She has been an educator for over 14 years. She holds a B.A. Degree in History and Education from the University of the West Indies (UWI). She also possesses several professional certificates in Understanding Dyslexia, Successful Educational Strategies for Children with Special Needs, and Supporting Multiple Abilities through Differentiation just to name a few. She is also certified in Counselling Youth and Children and Parenting the Adolescent. Chrystal is the Founder and Principal of two academic institutions, the Caribbean Ivy League Academy and the Caribbean Academy for Reading Intervention and Development. She founded the Caribbean Academy for Reading Intervention and Development where she works assiduously with children who have reading challenges. She also uses this platform to motivate, inspire and help build confidence in the children who are in her care.

Chrystal Murray 

Reading Interventionist 

1-868-474-9819