Do you want to target and teach core words with your student and/or child with complex communication needs? These double-sided brightly colored flashcards can be used for a variety of communication, language, and literacy activities.

Here are some ideas to get started!
1. Work on print awareness and phonemic awareness by modeling the letter on the card and then sounding it out. Using the visual cue will help students connect the letter and word with the corresponding picture. For example, when choosing the card “jump,” emphasize the “J” and point to the letter at the same time.
2. Ask your student to think of another word that starts with the target letter. For example, if you are doing "L" for "like", ask your student to tell you another word that starts with L. For students with communication systems, have them find another word that begins with that letter on their talker.
3. Answer “wh” questions. For example, for the word "play", "What do you like to play?"
4. Start a discussion about one word. For example, the word "need". What are the things that you need? You can model "e.g., bathroom, shower, food, drink, etc."
5. Target decoding and reading fluency by reading the sentence on the back of the card.
6. Work on communication by practicing the word in a sentence on the child's talker. For example, for the word "swim", I can create the sentence..."I swim in a pool." A child may also want to practice creating the same sentence on the card with their talker and/or voice. Make this more challenging by using two cards to make one sentence.
7. Target the lower and upper case of each letter of the alphabet. All the cards have both the upper and lower case of each letter.
8. Use gestural cues with the cards. For example, for the word "swim", move your arms to show "swimming".
9. Model core vocabulary in conjunction with the cards and the child's talker and/or verbalizations.
10. Play a game by calling out a letter sound and your student/child must find the correct card with the same sound.

Finally, use the cards as a companion to my book, All About Core, An Alphabet Book for Emerging Readers.