WRITING
Alphabet Flip Charts
Some Children are not able to use their hands to write with a traditional pencil. Each student needs an alternative
tool for writing. To find out more visit http://www.med.unc.edu/ahs/clds/products/available-for-purchase
One alternative way of writing is through using an Alphabet flip-chart. Below are the steps written by Jane Farrall on
how to use a flip-chart with an emergent student during writing:
Procedure during writing with flip charts (Farrall, 2013):

Establish topic/purpose e.g. Student selects a photo of themselves doing something, write about their
holidays etc.
o
For verbal students – get them to discuss what they are going to write about.
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For students with Complex Communication Needs (CCN) discuss some options of what they could
write about, use visuals of the topics e.g. photo of the student. Come up with 3 different sentences
e.g. Cody is drumming, Cody likes drumming, Cody is cool. You could write the options and discuss
them, use their yes/no response to make a selection of what you are aiming for. Remove the
sentences before the student starts writing so they cannot copy (remember copying is not writing!).

Get the student to use the flip chart to select letters (See Alternative pencils CD for instruction)

After the student has selected some letters off the flip-chart for their writing, you write the target sentence
under their writing and point out any correlations.

Once the student is showing some consistent selection of initial sounds or starting to select a space in their
writing, you can further shape their writing by drawing a line for each word in their sentence (do this at the
beginning before they start to write their sentence). Draw attention to the lines to help them focus on
writing each target word.

If a student knows more than 80% of the alphabet, then move them on from the flip chart to keyboard (on
computer) or iPad.
Drawing lines for sentence.
Eg. sentence could be: The dog is cool.
Draw four lines.
An example of an Alphabet Flip-Chart