This is a guest post by blogger Laureen that originally ran in October 2014. If you like what you see here, you can check out her blog,   Teach with Laughter , for more of her writing.

Hi again! It’s Laureen from   Teach With Laughter . I’m excited to be writing today about some blends books from the   Letter Buddies series   that I have had a chance to share with my students.

The  Letter Buddies Blends Books  each contain six examples of a blend, one per page with just the word printed underneath.  The  Letter Buddies Best Friends Books  are a perfect companion, using the same six words written in simple sentences.

I used the Blends Books in a small group to introduce the words to the students. Since the pictures gave us clues to the words this was easy and built their confidence. Then I introduced the Best Friends blends book with the same words used in sentences. Since students were familiar with the words and the other words were beginning sight words they were very successful, and we could focus on fluency and sentence structure.

Do your students struggle with ‘b’ and ‘d’ reversals? Mine do, so for this lesson I focused on the blends ‘br’ and ‘dr’. Scroll to the bottom of the page to download a ‘br’/‘dr’ blends anchor chart.

Then to check for understanding, I had my students complete the following activity. They needed to differentiate between pictures that start with ‘br’ or ‘dr’. Combined with the anchor chart, students completed this independently at a word work station while I worked with another group.

I hope that you have a chance to check out this great book series!

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Laureen is a first-grade teacher in Canada. She has been teaching kindergarten and grade one for more than twenty years.   Laureen loves to make learning fun and you can find her at her blog,   Teach With Laughter .

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To learn more about Letter Buddies ,   click here to visit our website , or click the series highlights images below to download information sheets with key features .   To get today's free activity download, click the image to the right below!