New Literacy Resources for your Literacy Stations

Literacy stations can feel daunting for many reasons, but one of the biggest challenges is the amount of preparation required to create activities that are engaging, meaningful, and differentiated. When I first began using literacy stations years ago, I spent far too much time photocopying activities that often took longer to prepare than they took students to complete. Too often, these tasks became busy work rather than meaningful learning.

In my role as a Teacher Coach, I wanted to find ways to better support teachers in their literacy stations by reducing prep time while maximizing student learning. This led me to explore low-floor, high-ceiling literacy tasks, activities that are accessible to all learners yet rich enough to allow for deep thinking and differentiation.

In math, we naturally rely on manipulatives to support hands-on learning, yet I noticed that comparable tools for literacy were surprisingly limited. In response to this gap, and to the challenges teachers were facing, I began designing literacy manipulatives that could be used flexibly and in multiple ways to support word work and language development across grade levels.

Tiny Trinkets boxes include items representing each letter of the alphabet, along with common digraphs (CH, SH, TH, and WH). Teachers across multiple grades quickly found creative ways to use these manipulatives in word work stations. In Grade 6 classrooms, for example, students sorted the items and challenged one another to identify the sorting rules—an activity that was easily differentiated and deeply engaging for all learners. The success of these activities, along with enthusiastic teacher feedback, inspired the creation of two additional literacy manipulative collections.

Vowelettes

Thinklets – Objects for Word Work are a compilation of a wide variety of small, uncategorized items that can be sorted in endless ways. Students can use Thinklets to explore initial, medial, and final sounds, syllables, rhyming, and spelling patterns. In one Grade 6 classroom, students sorted items based on silent letters, blends, and vowel sounds. The possibilities are limitless, and students love the hands-on nature of the manipulatives as they connect physical objects to abstract word concepts.

Vowelettes

Vowelettes – Little Trinkets for Teaching Vowel Sounds are a curated collection of literacy manipulatives (more than 100 items) organized by short and long vowel sounds, OO patterns, and R controlled vowels. Designed to complement the Tiny Trinkets alphabet boxes, Vowelettes are ideal for whole-class instruction, small-group learning, or independent practice. Students benefit from repeated, hands-on opportunities to explore vowel patterns, and teachers can use the items as individual sets or together as a comprehensive resource.

These collections save teachers hours of planning, as the kits can be reused over time in countless ways. Students find the items engaging, unique, and novel, which increases motivation and participation. Each kit supports differentiated, easy-to-manage literacy stations that are intentionally aligned with the explicit instruction already happening in whole-class lessons.

Explore these kits and their accompanying reusable activity sheets in my store, designed to save time and support meaningful literacy learning.