Bucket-o'-Phonics

Take a look at a resource that Deb Martin, new ABE tutor found for us at Wal Mart for just under $5.00.

There are two types of tiles available. The brightly colored ones spread out on my desktop in this picture are grouped into four colors, namely: pale blue single letters, yellow consonant blends, orange vowel pairs, and purple combinations of vowels and consonants. The plain white ones are single letters in upper and lower case. Each 176-piece bucket-o’-phonics costs about $4.95 plus tax. Tutors and learners can use them as manipulatives, that is pieces to push around the tabletop to represent the way you move sounds around when you decode (sound out) words in reading. This idea works the multi-sensory principle that I push so heavily in tutor training. Of course, Scrabble tiles work almost as well, but not everyone has a game set, and these are cheaper.