L’atelier des mots

An empty French classroom with the chairs still upside down on the desks and the board wiped clean. A day before the children come back, the teachers go in. That day has its own word.

Where the word comes from

Three bits stuck together, and it is one of the tidiest word sums in French. ‘Entrer’ is to go in, from Latin ‘intrare’. Put ‘r-’ on the front, around 1140, and you get ‘rentrer’, to go in again. Change the ending and you get ‘la rentrée’, the going back, recorded from the 1200s. Put ‘pré-’ on the front of that, meaning before, and you have ‘la prérentrée’ - the going-back-again that happens before the going-back-again. In 2026 it fell on Monday 31 August, with the children returning on Tuesday 1 September.

What’s included

•    The etymology comic - large illustrated cards, one idea to a card, from Latin ‘intra’ through to teachers putting the chairs down in an empty room.

•    The word-history breakdown, Proto-Indo-European to modern French, dated at each stage the record allows.

•    Pronunciation respellings on every French and Latin form.

For personal use in home education and tutoring only.

Who it’s for

•    KS3 and KS4 French learners meeting prefixes as a way of building words rather than a list to learn.

•    Learners who already have ‘rentrée’ and are ready to see what French does next with it.

•    Home educators who like a word that shows its own construction.

•    Dyslexic learners working on morphology, where a long word made of three known pieces is a good deal easier than a long word made of nothing.

•    Parents and adults who want to know what French teachers do in the last week of August.

•    Anyone teaching prefixes in English who wants a clean parallel from another language.

The learner needs ‘rentrer’ first, or at least ‘rentrée’. The whole product turns on seeing one word inside another, so if the middle piece is missing the word is just five syllables. Buy it last of the seven.

Why this exists

This is the clearest morphology lesson in the French shop and it happens to be about something real. A learner can watch a word being assembled in front of them - go in, go in again, the going-in-again, the one before the going-in-again - and every stage is a word French actually uses. That is what morphology teaching is meant to look like, and few words come apart this cleanly.

How it prints

The large cards print one to a page, single-sided, and go onto a ring after laminating, trimming and punching. For this word the deck has a specific use: deal out the four stage cards in the wrong order and ask a child to rebuild the word.

The single sheet at the end holds the whole thing on one page, print-and-go, no laminating. Printer needed for both; laminator and one binder ring if you want the deck.

Related resources

The rest of the school-year group in L’atelier des mots: ‘rentrée’ first of all, then ‘rentrer’, ‘rentré’, and back before the prefix, ‘entrer’, ‘entrez’ and ‘entrée’.

Bought with ‘rentrée’ this makes a two-deck set on the French school year - the teachers’ day and the children’s day, in that order. All seven decks together run one Latin verb from ‘intra’ to a French classroom in September. No other word family in the shop runs that far.

The free Wordhord card on ‘la rentrée’ mentions the prérentrée and gives the English-language background.

Available now as a PDF download.

A chest of drawers with one drawer not quite shut, a corner of yellow cloth still showing where something has been pushed back in and hasn’t gone all the way. ‘Rentré’ is that word - what has been put back inside and kept there.

Where the word comes from

It is the past participle of ‘rentrer’, working as a describing word, and French has had it in that job since the 1600s. That is a gap of four hundred years: the same participle had already become a noun, ‘rentrée’, back in the 1200s. Four hundred years between one use and the other, from the same form. Behind both is ‘entrer’, from Latin ‘intrare’, to go into, with ‘r-’ stuck on the front around 1140 to mean going in again.

What’s included

•    The etymology comic - large illustrated cards, one idea to a card, from Latin ‘intra’ through to the two living senses.

•    The word-history breakdown, Proto-Indo-European to modern French, with the noun and the adjective dated separately.

•    The two sense cards: ‘des joues rentrées’, sunken cheeks, cheeks gone inwards; and ‘une colère rentrée’, anger pushed back inside and not shown.

•    The card that ties the two together: something that could have come out was pushed back in and kept there.

•    An accent card - ‘rentré’, ‘rentrée’ and ‘rentrer’ all end on the same sound, and ‘rentre’ doesn’t.

•    The sources page and the how-to-use guide for the adult.

•    Pronunciation respellings on every French and Latin form.

For personal use in home education and tutoring only.

Who it’s for

•    KS4 French learners, and KS3 learners who are ahead of the group.

•    Anyone who has met past participles as verb endings and not yet as adjectives.

•    Home-educated learners going deeper into a word family than a textbook would.

•    Dyslexic learners who keep losing the accent on ‘rentré’ because it makes no difference to the sound.

•    Readers of French fiction, where ‘une colère rentrée’ turns up and a dictionary is no help at all.

•    Adults and parents working through the family together.

This is the hardest of the seven, and not a starting point. It assumes the reader already knows what a past participle is and has met ‘rentrer’. A learner who hasn’t will get a lot of grammar vocabulary and not much French. Start with ‘rentrer’ and come back to this one.

Why this exists

A past participle used as an adjective is a real hurdle and it usually gets taught as a rule with no picture attached. Here it has two pictures. Sunken cheeks and bottled-up anger are not obviously the same thing, and a learner who works out that they are - that both are something pushed back in and held - has understood the participle, not just memorised it. The bodily sense and the emotional sense running off one word also makes a child stop and think.

How it prints

The large cards print one to a page, single-sided, ready to laminate, trim, punch and clip onto a ring. Numbered so they go back in order. With this word the pair of sense cards is what you want in your hand - the cheeks and the anger, held up together.

The single sheet holds the whole word on one page and needs nothing but a printer. A laminator and a binder ring if you want the deck; you assemble it yourself.

Related resources

The same group in L’atelier des mots covers going in, coming back and going back to school: ‘entrer’, ‘entrez’, ‘entrée’, ‘rentrer’, ‘rentrée’ and ‘prérentrée’.

‘Rentrée’ is the obvious companion and it makes a good lesson: the same participle, one turned into a noun in the 1200s and one into an adjective in the 1600s.

The free Wordhord card on ‘la rentrée’ gives the English reader the wider family.

Available now as a PDF download.

Tomatoes, burrata and ham, put down in front of you before the main course. In France that plate is the ‘entrée’ - the way in to the meal.

Where the word comes from

‘Entrée’ started as part of the verb. It is the feminine past participle of ‘entrer’, the bit you would use in ‘has entered’, and French turned it into a noun in the 1100s. From there it took on jobs. It is the act of entering. It is the way in, and ‘l’entrée de l’immeuble’ is the front of a block of flats. It is the little hall inside a French flat where the coats go. It is a ticket - the Académie was recording ‘entrées gratuites’ and ‘entrées payantes’ in 1935. It is an entrance on stage, in ballet, in the circus and in music. And it is the first course, which it has been since about 1536, when the opening stage of a meal was called the ‘entrée de table’.

What’s included

•    The etymology comic - illustrated stage cards covering the Latin origin and then each living sense in turn: the way in, the ticket, the hallway, the first course.

•    The word-history breakdown, from Proto-Indo-European through Latin ‘intrare’ and Old French to the modern noun, dated where the record allows.

•    The senses card listing the full range the Académie records, including the ones a learner will not meet for years.

•    Two phrase cards: ‘entrée libre’ (come in for nothing) and ‘entrée interdite’ (do not come in at all), plus ‘avoir ses entrées chez quelqu’un’, which once meant the right to enter the King’s bedchamber.

•    The sources page and the how-to-use guide for the adult.

•    Pronunciation respellings on every French and Latin form.

For personal use in home education and tutoring only.

Who it’s for

•    KS3 and KS4 French learners, particularly around food, eating out and the town.

•    Learners who have met ‘entrée’ on a menu in English and assume it means the same thing.

•    Home-educated children building French vocabulary in topics rather than lists.

•    Dyslexic learners, and anyone who holds a word better when it comes with a picture and a reason.

•    Parents working through it alongside a child.

•    Adults who read menus in France and would like to know what they are reading.

It won’t suit a learner who is still working out that French nouns carry a gender. The cards use ‘l’entrée’ and ‘une entrée’ without stopping to explain the article, so if ‘le’ and ‘la’ are still new, this will add a layer rather than take one away.

Why this exists

This is a word with five jobs and a learner usually meets three of them in different lessons months apart, as though they were unrelated. A hallway, a ticket and a starter have nothing obvious in common. Put the root back under them and they line up: all three are a way in. That is one idea to hold instead of three, and it is the kind of thing a child remembers a week later because it made sense rather than because they practised it.

A footnote on the English borrowing

English borrowed this word twice. The early borrowing turned into ‘entry’ and stopped looking French. The later one - 1653 by one dictionary’s reckoning, 1724 by two others - kept its accent and its spelling, and that is the ‘entrée’ on an English menu.

How it prints

The large cards print one to a page and are meant to be laminated, trimmed, punched and clipped onto a ring. With this word there is a specific thing to do: lay the sense cards out on the table, and a child can see four apparently unrelated meanings arranged round one idea. That is much harder to do down a list.

The single sheet at the end carries the whole word on one page, ready to print with nothing else to do to it. A printer for either; a laminator and one binder ring if you want the deck, which you assemble yourself.

Related resources

Same corner of the shop, same everyday territory: ‘entrer’ and ‘entrez’ for the verb and the command it is built from, and then ‘rentrer’, ‘rentré’, ‘rentrée’ and ‘prérentrée’ for what happens when French puts ‘r-’ on the front and makes it about going back.

The closest pairing is ‘rentrée’. The two words are made the same way - a past participle pressed into service as a noun - a century apart, and reading them together is the clearest demonstration in the shop of how French builds nouns out of verbs.

The free Wordhord card on ‘la rentrée’ covers the English side of the family.

Available now as a PDF download.

Knock on a French door and the word that comes back through it is ‘Entrez !’. It is a command, and most learners use it long before anyone tells them they are using the imperative.

Where the word comes from

It is the ‘vous’ form of ‘entrer’ with the ‘vous’ taken off. ‘Vous entrez’ is you go in; drop the pronoun and you have the order. To a friend or a child you would say ‘Entre !’ instead. To a stranger, a teacher, or more than one person, it is ‘Entrez !’. Behind both of them is Latin ‘intrare’, to go into, itself built on ‘intra’, meaning inside - a word that was not a verb at all until the Romans made one out of it. French had ‘entrer’ by the 900s.

What’s included

•    The etymology comic - nine illustrated stage cards taking the word from Latin ‘intra’ to a knock at a door in a French flat.

•    The word-history breakdown, Proto-Indo-European to modern French, dated at each stage the record allows.

•    The command card: how the imperative is made, shown rather than explained - ‘vous entrez’ with the pronoun struck out.

•    The register card: ‘Entre !’ to a friend or a child, ‘Entrez !’ to a teacher, a stranger, or a group.

•    The homophone card: ‘Entrez’, ‘entrer’, ‘entrée’ and ‘entré’ all said the same way, with the accent distinguishing them on the page and the surrounding grammar distinguishing them in speech.

•    The sources page and the how-to-use guide for the adult.

•    Pronunciation respellings on every French and Latin form.

For personal use in home education and tutoring only.

Who it’s for

•    KS3 and KS4 French learners meeting the imperative for the first time.

•    Learners who can say ‘Entrez !’ but couldn’t tell you why it ends that way.

•    Home educators covering French grammar without a textbook sequence to lean on.

•    Dyslexic learners who lose the difference between ‘entrer’, ‘entrez’ and ‘entrée’ because all three sound identical.

•    Parents and adults learning alongside a child.

•    Anyone who likes the small mechanics of a language.

This one won’t help a learner who hasn’t yet met ‘vous’ and ‘tu’ as two different ways of addressing someone. The register card assumes that distinction is already there, even loosely. Without it, the whole point of the product goes past.

Why this exists

The four-way homophone is a genuine problem, and it is a spelling problem rather than a speaking one. A learner hears one sound and has to choose between four spellings, and the usual advice - learn the endings - asks the working memory to hold four abstract rules at once. This deck does it the other way round. It puts each form in a scene of its own, so the spelling attaches to a situation rather than to a rule.

How it prints

The nine large cards are made to come apart. Print single-sided, laminate, trim, punch the top-left corner and run them onto one binder ring; the numbering means a dropped deck goes back together. With this word in particular, hold up two cards side by side and ask which one you would say to a teacher.

The single sheet at the back puts all nine on one page for the middle of a lesson. No laminating and no cutting for that one. A printer is needed either way, plus a laminator and a ring if you want the deck.

Related resources

If you’re working on doors and going in, the rest of that group in L’atelier des mots is ‘entrer’ (the infinitive this command is made from), ‘entrée’ (the way in, and the first course of a meal) and the four ‘r-’ words: ‘rentrer’, ‘rentré’, ‘rentrée’ and ‘prérentrée’.

‘Entrer’ is the one to pair this with. Two decks, one root, and the homophone card in each pointing at the other.

The free English card on ‘la rentrée’ in the Wordhord comes off the same Latin verb and is worth reading first if you want the wider picture.

Available now as a PDF download.

Where the word comes from

Latin had ‘intra’, meaning ‘within, inside’. It was not a verb. It was the word you used for being inside the walls, and it began life as a case form of an older adjective meaning ‘situated within’. The verb was built on top of it afterwards: ‘intrare’, to go into, to enter. French wore that down. By the 900s speakers were saying ‘entrer’, with an ‘e’ at the front and the Latin ending gone, and that is still the form in use. The same Latin verb travelled south and gave Spanish ‘entrar’ and Italian ‘entrare’. German went a different way entirely and built its own compound, ‘eintreten’.

What’s included

•    The etymology comic - eight illustrated stage cards, one idea to a card, with short captions written for a learner rather than a linguist.

•    The word-history breakdown, running from Proto-Indo-European through Latin to modern French, with a date at each stage the record allows.

•    The English-links card: ‘enter’, ‘entry’, ‘entrance’ and ‘entrée’, all off the same Latin verb.

•    The cross-language card, showing Spanish ‘entrar’ and Italian ‘entrare’ alongside the French, and the point where German parts company.

•    The sources page, naming every dictionary consulted.

•    The how-to-use guide for the adult.

•    Pronunciation respellings in plain English letters on every French and Latin form.

For personal use in home education and tutoring only.

Who it’s for

•    Anyone who likes knowing where words come from.

•    KS3 and KS4 French learners, in school or at home.

•    Home-educated children working through French without a class around them.

•    Learners with dyslexia or a weak working memory, who find isolated vocabulary hard to hold on to.

•    Parents who want to work alongside a child rather than test them.

•    Adults picking French back up years after school.

It won’t suit a learner who hasn’t met French verbs yet. The cards assume the reader can already recognise that ‘entrer’ and ‘entrez’ are the same verb in two forms, even if they couldn’t explain the difference. If that isn’t there yet, a noun from the shop is the better place to start.

Why this exists

‘Entrer’ is a word a learner meets in the first fortnight and then stops looking at. It becomes a string of letters and nothing else. Taking it apart puts something underneath it - a Latin word for inside, a verb built on that word, then centuries of French rubbing the ends off. The four English cousins on the last card make the link plain. A child who can see ‘entrance’ inside ‘entrer’ has one word to hold rather than two.

A footnote on the spelling

‘Entrer’, ‘entrez’, ‘entrée’ and ‘entré’ are said exactly the same way. Four spellings, one sound. On the page the accent tells them apart. In speech nothing does, and only the surrounding grammar shows which one you heard.

How it prints

Two forms, and you choose. The eight large cards print single-sided, one idea to a page, ready to laminate, trim and punch so they clip onto a single binder ring. They’re numbered, so a loose deck goes back in order, and once they’re on the ring a child can turn them over and lay the Latin out next to the French. It’s a bag-sized deck, or a dinner-table one - not a pencil case.

The single sheet at the end holds all eight cards on one page. Print it and it’s ready - no laminating, no cutting. That’s the version for the middle of a lesson. You’ll need a printer for either, and a laminator and a ring for the deck; there’s no ready-made deck in the box.

Related resources

The same everyday territory in L’atelier des mots - doors, going in, coming home: ‘entrez’, the command a French speaker shouts through the door; ‘entrée’, the way in and the first course; and the four words built on the ‘r-’ form, ‘rentrer’, ‘rentré’, ‘rentrée’ and ‘prérentrée’.

All six come off this same Latin verb. Most of the shop’s topic sets are held together by subject rather than by root. Bought together they make one deck that runs from ‘intra’ to the first day of the French school year.

Available now as a PDF download.

Where the word comes from

‘Rentrée’ is the feminine past participle of ‘rentrer’ used as a noun, and French has had it since the 1200s - the same move that turned ‘entrer’ into ‘entrée’ a century earlier. Its plain sense is a going-back-in: ‘la rentrée des joueurs’ is the players coming back out after half time. Its second sense is the resumption of activity after a break, and in France almost everything has one. Parliament has a rentrée. The law courts have one. The theatres have one. Publishers hold their new novels back and release them together, and that is ‘la rentrée littéraire’. Used on its own, with nothing after it, ‘la rentrée’ is the whole period: ‘nous verrons cela à la rentrée’ means we’ll deal with that in September.

What’s included

•    The etymology comic - large illustrated cards, one idea to a card, from Latin ‘intra’ through to a spacecraft coming back into the atmosphere.

•    The word-history breakdown, Proto-Indo-European to modern French, dated at each stage the record allows.

•    The senses cards: the plain going-back-in, ‘la rentrée des classes’, the parliamentary and judicial and theatrical rentrées, and ‘la rentrée littéraire’.

•    The absolute-use card: ‘à la rentrée’ on its own, meaning in September, when everything starts again.

•    The phrase card: ‘la rentrée atmosphérique’, a spacecraft coming back in.

•    The sources page and the how-to-use guide for the adult.

•    Pronunciation respellings on every French and Latin form.

For personal use in home education and tutoring only.

Who it’s for

•    KS3 and KS4 French learners, around school, the calendar and daily life.

•    Anyone about to spend late August or September in France and wondering why every shop window says the same thing.

•    Home-educating families, who often meet the French school calendar sideways rather than through a textbook.

•    Dyslexic learners, and anyone who holds vocabulary better attached to a scene than to a list.

•    Parents and adults reading French news, where the word turns up in politics and publishing as much as in schools.

•    Learners who like the words a language has and English doesn’t.

It won’t suit a learner who is still at the stage of matching single French words to single English ones. This word doesn’t have a single English match, and the whole product is about that. A learner who needs one-to-one pairs will find it unsettling rather than useful.

Why this exists

French has one noun for a national restart, and English divides the same ground between back to school, the new term, the new academic year, the new season, Parliament returning and getting back to normal. Show a learner that directly and you have the clearest possible demonstration that languages don’t map onto each other word for word. A child who has understood ‘la rentrée’ has understood something about translation as well as about French.

How it prints

The large cards print one to a page and are made to come apart - laminate, trim, punch the corner, one binder ring. Numbered, so they go back in order. Laid out on a table, the sense cards show schools, parliament, courts, theatres and publishers arranged round one word.

The single sheet at the back holds the lot on one page. Print it and it’s done. A printer for either form, a laminator and a ring for the deck, which you build yourself.

Related resources

The same everyday group in L’atelier des mots: ‘prérentrée’ (the teachers’ return, a day earlier), ‘rentrer’ (the verb underneath), ‘rentré’ (the same participle as an adjective), and ‘entrer’, ‘entrez’ and ‘entrée’ for the family before the ‘r-’ went on.

‘Prérentrée’ is the natural second purchase, and the two together give a child the whole first week of the French school year in two decks.

Nothing on this root is stocked in the German, Spanish or Italian shops.

The free English card on ‘la rentrée’ in the Wordhord is the companion piece, written for a curious English reader rather than a French learner. It covers what English has done with the word.

Available now as a PDF download.

Photograph someone facing the light and they come out dark - mostly edge, their detail lost in the brightness behind. Painters and photographers call that 'contre-jour', French for 'against the light'. The word crossed from painting to photography without changing at all - photographers in the nineteenth century simply picked up a painter's term from the seventeenth and carried it across, which is why a 400-year-old art word now lives on camera settings.

What's included

The etymology comic - illustrated stage cards, one idea each, with short KS3/4 captions

The word-history breakdown, Latin to modern French, dated where the record allows

The 1615 painting origin and the move into photography

The English-links section - 'counter', 'contrast', 'contradict' from the same 'contra'

The sources page

A short how-to-use guide for the adult

For personal use in home education and tutoring only.

Who it's for

It suits KS3 and KS4 French learners, students of art and photography, anyone who likes word-building, home-educated children, and specialist tuition students including those with dyslexia. It's a good bridge word - a French term a learner may already have met in an art or photography lesson without knowing it was French.

It's a more specialist word than 'bonjour' or 'journee' - a learner meets it less often, and mainly in art and photography. That's part of its interest, but it isn't core everyday vocabulary, and the resource doesn't pretend otherwise.

Why this exists

A word made of two clear parts - 'against' and 'the light' - is easier to hold than a term learned as a lump. 'Contre-jour' is one where the picture is exact: once a learner sees the figure black against the bright window, the word explains itself, and the shared 'contra' opens a door onto 'contrast' and 'contradict' too.

Originally created for my dyslexic son.

Related resources

Same topic, in L'atelier des mots: its two light-family cousins here, 'abat-jour' and 'ajoure', and the wider 'jour' family - 'bonjour', 'journee', 'sejour', 'journal', 'ajourner'.

Same root: all built on 'jour', from Latin 'diurnum'. 'Contre-jour', 'abat-jour' and 'ajoure' use the light-sense; the rest use the day-sense.

Free in the Wordhord: the English cousins 'journey' and 'journal', and (from the other half of this word) the 'contra' family. And the Compendium post on why word origins help with modern languages, dyslexic learners especially.

Available now as a PDF download.

How it prints - two forms

This PDF prints into two forms, and you choose which suits you.

The large cards - one idea to a page - are made to be laminated and clipped onto a binder ring. Print single-sided, laminate, trim, and punch a hole in the top-left corner, then hold them together with one ring. The cards are numbered, so a loose deck goes back in order. Once they're on the ring a child can handle them, turn them over and lay them out - which is where a lot of the understanding happens. The deck is a bag or dinner-table object: something a child picks up and works through at the table, not a pencil-case card.

The single sheet at the end holds the whole word on one page. Print it and it's ready - no laminating, no cutting. It's the print-and-go form, for the fridge or the middle of a lesson, when you want the whole story in front of you at once. You assemble the deck yourself; there's no ready-made deck in the box. You'll need a printer, and a laminator and a ring for the deck. Neither form is homework and neither is a test.

About this resource

This is an educational support material. It isn't a diagnostic, assessment or therapeutic tool, and it doesn't replace specialist assessment or intervention. Outcomes vary by learner. It's built to be revisited over time rather than worked through in one go, and it isn't a complete teaching programme or a substitute for formal instruction.

French keeps an oddly large crowd of words for the few minutes when it starts to get light - 'l'aube', 'l'aurore', 'le petit jour', 'la pointe du jour'. 'Point du jour' is one of them: daybreak, the coming of the daylight.

The variant 'la pointe du jour' exists alongside 'le point du jour' with the same meaning - the same dawn named with either the masculine 'point' or the feminine 'pointe', a small reminder that fixed phrases don't always settle on one form.

What's included

The etymology comic - illustrated stage cards, one idea each, with short KS3/4 captions

The word-history breakdown, Latin to modern French, dated where the record allows

The light-sense of 'jour' explained - day and daylight in one word

The other French words for dawn - 'l'aube', 'l'aurore', 'le petit jour'

The sources page

A short how-to-use guide for the adult

For personal use in home education and tutoring only.

Who it's for

It suits KS3 and KS4 French learners, anyone who enjoys how one language keeps many words where another keeps one, home-educated children, and specialist tuition students including those with dyslexia. It also opens a small vocabulary set - the several French words for dawn - which a learner can collect together.

'Point du jour' is more literary than everyday - a learner is likelier to meet it in a poem, a song or a place name than in conversation. The resource treats it that way, as a lovely phrase and a clear demonstration of the light-sense of 'jour', rather than as core spoken vocabulary.

Why this exists

This phrase teaches the split inside 'jour' better than almost any other. English uses its word for 'day' to mean a stretch of hours and little else; French 'jour' means that and the daylight. A learner who grasps 'point du jour' - the point where the light appears - has understood the light-sense, and 'abat-jour' and 'contre-jour' fall into place after it.

Originally created for my dyslexic son.

Related resources

Same topic, in L'atelier des mots: the light-sense cousins 'abat-jour', 'contre-jour' and 'ajoure', and the wider 'jour' family - 'bonjour', 'journee', 'sejour', 'journal', 'ajourner'.

Same root: all built on 'jour', from Latin 'diurnum'. 'Point du jour' uses the light-sense, as the light-family words do.

Free in the Wordhord: the English cousins 'journey' and 'journal'. And the Compendium post on why word origins help with modern languages, dyslexic learners especially.

Available now as a PDF download.

How it prints - two forms

This PDF prints into two forms, and you choose which suits you.

The large cards - one idea to a page - are made to be laminated and clipped onto a binder ring. Print single-sided, laminate, trim, and punch a hole in the top-left corner, then hold them together with one ring. The cards are numbered, so a loose deck goes back in order. Once they're on the ring a child can handle them, turn them over and lay them out - which is where a lot of the understanding happens. The deck is a bag or dinner-table object: something a child picks up and works through at the table, not a pencil-case card.

The single sheet at the end holds the whole word on one page. Print it and it's ready - no laminating, no cutting. It's the print-and-go form, for the fridge or the middle of a lesson, when you want the whole story in front of you at once. You assemble the deck yourself; there's no ready-made deck in the box. You'll need a printer, and a laminator and a ring for the deck. Neither form is homework and neither is a test.

About this resource

This is an educational support material. It isn't a diagnostic, assessment or therapeutic tool, and it doesn't replace specialist assessment or intervention. Outcomes vary by learner. It's built to be revisited over time rather than worked through in one go, and it isn't a complete teaching programme or a substitute for formal instruction.