User's Guide

Overlay Activity Kits: Language Arts: I Can Write Series
Description
Teaching students how to write is one of the key areas of literacy instruction. Students
need many opportunities to integrate reading and writing to build the necessary skills for
literacy. Because of the challenges of spelling, vocabulary, and penmanship, writing can be
a frustrating process for many students. The I Can Write series uses the strategies of
sentence modeling with prepared word banks. Students who complete the Writing Word by
Word activities can transition easily into highly motivating Writing Letter by Letter activities
and overlays. The I Can Write series provides teachers with a step-by-step method for
teaching beginning writing skills using IntelliKeys, IntelliTalk 3, and Overlay Maker 3.
The I Can Write series provides teachers with a step by step method for teaching beginning
writing skills using IntelliKeys, IntelliTalk 3, and Overlay Maker 3. This series includes:
• Writing Word by Word – Writing Word by Word develops writing fluency by providing
word banks and repetitive sentence patterns that enable students to create a variety of
sentences. Three levels of activities and overlays are provided. Templates are also
provided so teachers can create their own sentence activities and make custom
overlays to accompany them.
• Writing Letter by Letter – Writing Letter by Letter demonstrates a letter-by-letter
approach to writing words and sentences. Students work on spelling and letter sounds
with a word they have seen several times in the Word by Word activities, kittens.
Templates are provided for creating Letter by Letter activities for 3, 5, 7, and 9 letter
words, along with directions for creating custom overlays.
• Keyboard Writing – Keyboard Writing offers a simple strategy for painlessly
introducing students to a standard keyboard layout. Only the letters needed to spell a
single word, “kittens,” are marked on the keyboard overlay. The keyboard layout used
on the kittens keyboard is an alphabetical layout as young students have been exposed
to alphabetical order. The My Words box is used to focus the student’s spelling on
words that can be written with the letters from the word “kittens.” The templates
provided can be used when writing words other than kittens.
Refer to the
printable tutorial
in this Overlay
Tip
Activity Kit for
easy-to-follow step by
step instructions.
Objectives/Skills
• Developing writing fluency.
• Practicing reading and writing sight words.
• Developing sentence structure skills.
• Developing spelling proficiency by limiting letter choices and promoting success.
Grade Levels
Kindergarten–Grade 2
Curricular Area
Language Arts
Standards
Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process
elements appropriately.
13: Working with Overlay Activity Kits
139