Number & Letter Identification Aid

To support students in naming letters and numbers, I created a number and letter stick.   It's simply a long paint stick with different colors painted on each side.  After the paint dried, using a permanent marker I wrote the alphabet on one side and numbers on the other.  

My students use it as an aid to identify letters and numbers.  Depending on what we are learning, they will either draw a flash card with a number or letter on it.  If they know the letter or number they  will say & find it on the paint stick.  If they cannot label the letter or number, they match it visually to the same letter or number on the identification stick. My paras or myself will then cover up the letters or numbers past that letter or number.  Then, the student counts to the number by pointing to each number as they go or by singing the alphabet song until they reach that letter.  This sounds confusing but is actually quite simple!  Click on these video clips for clarification. 





(A big thank you goes out Miss Oaklye, our speech pathologists' daughter, for modeling the technique.)  

Instructor's Insight: One modification I would make if I made the sticks again is to have a letter stick with upper case letters on one side and lower case on the other.  Then, have another stick to use as a number stick.   On it, one side would have numbers with Velcro to work on one-to-one correspondence.  The other side would have numbers without Velcro.  Currently, I have a different stick for one-to-one correspondence.  (This is actually the paint stick used in the number line video clip above.)

The students simply Velcro items like tokens or counting bears to the stick to work on counting using one-to-one correspondence.