Dark Phonics · The Talking Shelf · v1
Six printables for the four-tray Talking Shelf, plus one sheet borrowed whole from the Writing Shelf. 12 sheets of paper, 17 printed sides.
Print at 100%. In the print dialog choose Actual size or Scale: 100%, never Fit to page. Every size on this shelf is a real size: a story card that is not 70 mm will not fit the envelope its pictures came in.
Cut once. Cards butt against each other with no gutters, and every grey line runs the full width or the full height of the page, so one straight stroke of the blade separates the cards on both sides of it. The lines are cut away — a line is the card edge — and the small black triangles in the margin, at the 5.5 mm printer-safe margin, are what you sight the blade on.
Printed is not finished. Every card that goes into a card stand or an envelope is mounted by hand on a coloured backing card with a 1 cm border all round, so it finishes 20 mm bigger each way: flip cards 80 × 120 → 100 × 140, story cards 70 × 70 → 90 × 90. The frame cards and the puppets are not mounted and print at finished size.
| Printable | Tray | File | Pages | Paper | Finish | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | Frame cards ×4 — 100 × 140 mm | 1, 2, 3 and 4 | T01-frame-cards.pdf | 4 | A4 portrait, 300 gsm card | laminate |
| B | Arrangement cards ×8 — 80 × 120 mm | 1 | T02-arrangement-cards.pdf | 4 | A4 portrait, 250 gsm card | duplex · short edge laminate |
| C | Story cards ×3 — 70 × 70 mm | 2 | T03-story-cards.pdf | 2 | A4 portrait, 250 gsm card | duplex · short edge laminate |
| D | Say-it cards ×8 — 80 × 120 mm | 3 | T04-say-it-cards.pdf | 4 | A4 portrait, 250 gsm card | duplex · short edge laminate |
| E | Stick puppets ×2 — the cat and the potato | 3 | T05-puppets.pdf | 2 | A4 portrait, 300 gsm card | — |
| F | Teacher card, 2-up A5 — “Tell me about it.” | 4 | T06-teacher-card.pdf | 1 | A4 landscape, 250 gsm card | laminate |
| Tray | Work | How it is worked | Sheets | What happens |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Behind the Screen | pair; solo entry | A, B · and the second miniature set | Two mats, one screen, eight objects twice over. He tells; she builds; the screen comes down. |
| 2 | Tell It, Order It | pair; solo entry | A, C · and Writing Shelf 06 printed TWICE | Six envelopes, A A B B C C. He tells the story; she lays her copy in the order she hears. |
| 3 | Puppet Talk | solo or pair | A, D, E | The cat asks, the potato answers. He turns the card to check — every word is a reader word. |
| 4 | Tell Me About It | teacher + child — a ROUTINE, not a shelf work | A, F · and the Tray-4 dictation photos, Writing Shelf 03 | He picks a photo and tells you about it. You say it back, correct, as if you agree. |
Tray 2 needs no new pictures — it needs the Writing Shelf's Tray-6 picture sequences, sheet 06, PRINTED TWICE. Six envelopes, A A B B C C, because both children need their own copy of the same set: one tells it, the other lays it out, and then they open both and compare. Print 06-picture-sequences.pdf twice — 3 sheets each, 6 in all, 12 cards a run at 70 × 70 mm, mounted to 90 × 90 — and do not rebuild it here. It is already made.
Print 4 sheets single-sided at 100% on card; laminate, then cut. One frame card stands at the back of each of the four trays.
Cut along every grey line — two strokes across the sheet and two down it, edge to edge — for one card of 100 × 140 mm. UNMOUNTED: this card stands at the back of the tray, it does not go into a stand, so it prints at finished size. One card a page, and not four: two columns of 100 mm would put a cut line inside the 5.5 mm printer-safe margin.
Print 2 sheets DUPLEX, flip on SHORT EDGE, 100%; print one sheet first and hold it to the light — the sentences must be behind their own picture. THE FRONTS ARE PLACEHOLDERS until the teacher photographs her own eight arrangements; print them anyway, the card works, and reprint when the photographs land.
One dot in the corner = one or two objects, two dots = two, three dots = three or four. It is a level, not an order.
Cut along every grey line — two strokes across, two down, edge to edge — for four butted cards of 80 × 120 mm. Mounted on a coloured backing card with a 1 cm border they finish at 100 × 140 mm, which is what the card stands take. The triangles land in the same place on both faces, so front cuts and back cuts coincide.
Print 1 sheet DUPLEX, flip on SHORT EDGE, 100%. Set letter on the front, the four lines on the back.
Cut along every grey line — for four butted squares of 70 × 70 mm, of which three carry a set and the fourth is blank on purpose. Mounted on a coloured backing card with a 1 cm border they finish at 90 × 90 mm, which is what the 10 × 10 cm envelopes take — the same card as Writing Shelf sheet 06, so a story card drops into the same envelope as its pictures.
Print 2 sheets DUPLEX, flip on SHORT EDGE, 100%; hold one to the light before you commit the rest — the exchange must be behind its own picture. Laminate: this is the tray they handle most.
Every picture is an existing Dark Phonics page, so the child meets a picture he already knows and spends his attention on the sentence.
Cut along every grey line — four butted cards of 80 × 120 mm a sheet. Mounted on a coloured backing card with a 1 cm border they finish at 100 × 140 mm.
Print 2 sheets single-sided at 100% on card. DO NOT laminate — a laminated puppet will not take tape. THE DRAWINGS ARE PLACEHOLDERS: two silhouettes stand at the size and in the place the real art will occupy, so the sheet reprints identically when the art lands.
Cut along every grey line — two strokes across and two down, edge to edge — for one piece of 100 × 200 mm: 180 mm of puppet with a 20 mm tab at the foot. Tape a lolly stick behind the tab. Do not cut round the puppet's outline; a puppet cut to its silhouette loses an ear inside a fortnight.
Print 1 sheet single-sided at 100% on card; laminate, then one cut. One card on the tray, one in your pocket.
One cut on the grey centre line, edge to edge, between the two black triangles — two identical A5 cards. Sheet 09 of the Writing Shelf, exactly.
The eight arrangement photographs. They are the teacher's own, of her own
miniatures on her own mat, because a stock photograph of a different cat on a different
bed is a different work. Until they land the fronts are a pale-grey placeholder that says
nothing at all — no word, no number — because a card that names its own picture
does the child's naming for him. Drop arr-1.png … arr-8.png
into phonics-images/satpin-v2/talking-shelf/ and rebuild with
--art-dir.
The two puppet drawings. puppet-cat.png and
puppet-potato.png, same folder, same flag. The sheet prints and cuts today
with a silhouette standing at the size and in the place the drawing will occupy, so it
reprints identically later.
The Writing Shelf pack, which this one sits beside, is at /dark-phonics-shelf/v2/PRINT-GUIDE.html.