Write the Word on Plain Lines: No Word Bank at All

Nothing is printed at the top of this 1st grade write the word page. No bank, no letters, no boxes to count into - only eight cards, each pairing one of eight toys with a plain handwriting line. A scooter, a rocket, a balloon, a truck, blocks, crayons, a spade, a chess piece. The child names what is there, listens to the sounds in order, and writes the word from those sounds alone. It is the hardest of the write the word pages by a distance.

Spelling from a picture reverses reading: the sounds come first and the letters have to be found for them. With no bank to check against, what lands on the line is the child's own phonics, which is the point - this page is a record rather than an exercise. Some of these pictures also have more than one honest name, so a child who writes scooter, moped or bike has read the picture correctly whatever the spelling does, and that is worth saying before marking anything.

Print the PDF free and ask for each word to be stretched aloud, sound by sound, before the pencil moves. Read the finished page for patterns rather than for a score: the vowels are usually the story, and eight words are enough to show one. If the spellings collapse, the word bank version supplies the correct words while keeping the naming, and the first letter version supports both ends. The abc order page is the next thing to do with these toy words.