One Simple Way to Easily Differentiate Word Work Activities & Minimize Your Prep Time

March 17, 2018

Prepping word work activities can be SO time-consuming!

Sometimes there are tons of things to print, cut out, and laminate. You spend 45 minutes preparing an activity…and then the kids are done with it in 10 minutes!! ? How can you keep things fresh and interesting when it takes so much time to prep each activity?

Then there’s differentiation to think about—how can you meet all your students’ varying needs? Even if you have students in word work groups, there can be variations within each group. How can you meet all their needs?

And then there are all the other concerns: How can I hold students accountable? How can I make sure they’re not practicing incorrectly?

These questions have been bouncing around in my head for the past 10+ years. And I’ve come up with different strategies to help me deal with these challenges, but I still wasn’t finding a true “solution.”

But THEN I learned about Boom cards —and immediately realized the incredible potential they hold for solving many of these word work challenges.

(If you’re not familiar with Boom Learning℠, it’s an online platform that can be used to create interactive games and activities. The decks provide instant feedback to students, allow them to work at their own pace, and are super motivating.)

The Boom platform allows me to create digital word work activities that are:

Differentiated – each deck focuses on one phonics or spelling feature that a child needs to work on!
Self-correcting – they provide feedback to students about their answers!
Tools for holding students accountable – I can see student progress and their scores with my Boom account!
No-prep!!

All of this is EXCITING STUFF, right!??!

I now have Kindergarten, first grade, and second grade Boom Card™ bundles available:

When you purchase any one of these resources, you’ll receive different PDFs – 1 for each individual skill pack that’s included.

Within each PDF, you’ll see directions to click on a link. Clicking on the link will open it in Boom – and prompt you to a) add it to your Boom account (if you already have one) or b) open a new account.

A Boom account is FREE, and you can use all of the materials in my bundles with a free account.

If you want to give your students individual logins, however (this will allow you to see how they do on their Boom decks), I recommend getting a paid account. It costs about as much as a Starbucks trip and is SO worth it!

Anyway, here’s a little peek at just a few of the included interactive activities in these bundles. Each one of these images represents a card, and a typical deck includes anywhere from 20-40 cards.