One class list, twenty-two name practice pages, five minutes

The first week of pre-K, a teacher friend of ours used to spend an evening making a name page for each of her 22 students in a word processor, one tab at a time. Last fall she pasted the class list into a box, picked a page type, and printed 22 pages in the time it took to find the stapler.

What you get

Paste one name per line into the name practice pack generator, up to 30 names, first name or first and last, and it prints one page per child. The all-in-one page has the name big at the top, three rows to trace, two to write, cut-out letter tiles to build the name, a box to count the letters, and a 6×6 grid to find them in. The other page types are trace and write (six big rows), a cut and paste build with two tiles per letter, a name mat to laminate, and a rainbow name traced five times with a color key.

Letters print in a dotted school font or as bold outline letters, in Title Case, UPPERCASE or lowercase. Everything is black and white for the copier.

Why it works

• A child's own name is the first word they care about spelling, so the attention is already there. The sheet gives it somewhere to go.
• Building the name from shuffled tiles is a different task from tracing it. It checks whether the child knows the letter order, not just the shapes.
• The find-the-letters grid is a letter recognition check hidden inside a name page. Nobody notices they are being assessed.

Who it suits

Pre-K and kindergarten, ages three to six. For a three-year-old use UPPERCASE and the name mat, which is the name in big letters to trace with a finger once it is laminated. By first grade the rainbow name and the cut and paste build are the pages still worth printing. For one child at home rather than a class, the plain name tracing sheet does the same job with less on the page, and our post on teaching a child to write their name covers what to do before any of these.

Print the pack once in Title Case and once in UPPERCASE and keep both in the folder. Different kids in the same room are ready for different cases.