UFLI in the Classroom

This was my first full year implementing UFLI in my classroom and I loved it. Once we got into the routines, I saw so much growth in my students. They really had a strong foundation with the short vowels, consonant sounds and blends, digraphs, and even starting to get into the long vowels. Next year, I will still be doing UFLI with my third grade students, but I'm going to organize my supplies a bit differently. Let me show you what I did with my first graders and how I'm going to change it next year.

First up is how I save and access the Google Slides (free on the UFLI Toolbox):

When you access the Google Slides straight from the website, you are forced to make a copy (so you don't edit the original--makes sense!). 

But, did you know that all those copies end up in your Google Drive folder? So every time you make a copy, another version is put into your Drive. You end up with tons of extra files in your Drive. 

So what to do instead? Create a UFLI Folder on your Google Drive and add the files into there. When you open a copy of the UFLI Google Slides, click the little folder with arrow. This allows you to move the file into the UFLI folder you created. You can create a folder for different grades, classes, students, groups, etc. if you work with a number of different students. 

I organized my files by skill set: short vowels, digraphs, silent e, longer words, r control, long vowels, diphthongs, and prefixes/suffixes. I have all the files downloaded and organized, but you just need the ones you use for your grade. I just add a bookmark to my browser so that I can open up my UFLI folder with one click.

You can now rename the file if you want and delete/rearrange/change slides. Next time you open the file from your Google Drive folder (instead of right from the UFLI website), the changes will be there! I like to add in my own clipart on some of the slides, so that it matches the alphabet posters I have in my room, but that's just me and my everything-needs-to-match tendencies! I also don't use the checklist/schedule pages, so I just delete those.

Organizing your UFLI Slides is just one way to save time and energy. And if for some reason the UFLI website is down, you will still have access to your own Google Drive! 

Here is how I organized my UFLI materials that we used daily. First up is our whiteboard kits, for the auditory drill (writing the letter that makes the sound) and writing words and dictated sentences. We used these every day! I put my whiteboards in a large Ziploc bag with a black fine tip dry erase marker (Expo are still my favourite) and a square of black felt that we use as erasers. 

These are the whiteboards I bought two years ago. They are holding up ok so far with daily use. A few of the corners are curling up which is annoying. I might try to glue them down over the summer. I like that they have lines on one side and blank one the other. They are also magnetic, so I could use the magnetic letters on them if I chose to. I could only find these ones on Amazon.com, but the shipping wasn't too much. If you don't care if they are magnetic, you can use these ones from Amazon.ca.

The second thing we used (every other day) is our magnetic boards for making words. 

I bought my magnetic letters from Amazon. UFLI recommends using a single colour of magnetic letters, but I find the blue/red ones easily available. I also don't think students rely on the colours to remember the vowels--we use Secret Stories for our vowels, so they understand the importance of those letters! :) 

I ended up buying a set of these Magnetic Trays from Pioneer Valley. I liked that they were smaller in size (8-1/4" x 9-3/4") and that they had the alphabet printed on them, to make it easier to put the letters back in the correct spot. 

The only downside was that there wasn't room to build the word with the magnets on the trays. At Michaels last summer, I ended up finding these magnetic sentence strips. I cut them apart into 8" strips.

If you can't find them at Michaels though, I found some similar ones on Amazon:

The nice thing is they just sit on top of the magnetic letters (the letters don't stick) and they all stack together perfectly. 

I had a cute little bookshelf beside my carpet area that I used to display holiday books that has two spots that are the right size for our magnetic letter trays and whiteboard kits. The kids could easily grab them when we are at the carpet area for UFLI. We practiced all year on how to put the materials back neatly though. lol.

Now for next year, I will still be doing UFLI with my third graders, but we will most likely be doing it at our tables instead of at the carpet together. I'm going to try these metal caddies (from Amazon) at each table:

I'm going to keep whiteboards at the bottom, the magnet trays in the middle, then at the top I will keep whiteboard markers, erasers, scissors, and glue. Then I think each student will have their own pencil box for pencil crayons, a pencil, and an eraser. I'll post some pics in August when I start setting up.

Also, have you tried out the UFLI Game website? They have 8 different games that you can play online or download/print: Tic Tac Toe, Bingo, Roll n Read, Wordcards, Four in a Row, Race Game, Spiral Game, and Ups and Downs. 

Just click on the game you want to play, click "Select Words", and then "Words from UFLI Foundations". Then you can scroll down to the lesson you are on and click regular words (the phonics skills) and/or irregular words (heart words). You can select/deselect as many lists or words as you want. Then click finish.

You can use this to play whole group with your projector (good for review or to fill a few extra minutes), you can share the link for students to play on devices (just click "Share", then "Share link with word list", the copy the link or QR code), or you can print them to play in the classroom (click "Print", then "Print current board"; you have to change the layout to portrait or horizontal, depending on the game and how it looks). They just print black and white, so I like to use coloured cardstock to make them more exciting when I print them. 

Let me know if you have any questions about UFLI and how I used it.