Dear
Visitors,
On this page you will find links to many reproducible activities,
picture and word cards for sorting, and word family activity sheets.
What started out as addressing 35 word families (rimes) with 2 or 3
activities each has turned into more than 70 word families with the
potential for 30 activities. I thank you for your suggestions and
requests. It helps inform my decisions when I consider adding new items. If
you're going to use the picture and word cards, I suggest that you mount
them on 3 x 5 (two copies) so that your students can play games like
Concentration and Go Fish with them.
To expedite finding the rime families in the large
collection below, I've
added a word family database with each rime bookmarked. Many people have
requested some way to find them since they usually wanted to download
each activity from one family. Unfortunately, this program takes the
visitor right back to the top of the page! Let me know
(carl1404@msn.com) if this makes
it easier for you. To access the word family you need, just click
on the appropriate rime below. Hope it helps!
Note: I find that if you right
click on a link and open it in a new window, you'll come right back to
where you were on the page after you close the new window. Several of my
teachers have asked that I download whole files (ones they use all the
time) to their desktops and it's easy
to do if you're interested. Make a new folder on your desktop for the
targeted files. Right click on the link and choose "save target as" and
then save it to your new desktop folder. This just takes a few minutes
because you're not actually opening the file. It
has saved lots of time for the K-2 teachers at my school. You
don't have to download and wait forever!!
New: word family chart below with colorful
illustrations. Place in writing folders.
Happy word play!
Cherry Carl
Please note big changes to Word Way!
July, 2006: I had to move more items from this page to others.
Word Way became too difficult for me to open behind the scenes because
of its size!! I know that you wouldn't want me to stop making additions
and changes! I moved all of the
Jeopardy games to their own page,
Jeopardy Drive, digraph rime families (ail, ain, ee, eep,
oat, etc.) to
Digraph Drive, diphthong rime
families (oil, ew, oy, etc,) to
Diphthong Drive, and Working With Words that uses Fry's
words now had its own page as well (More W.O.W.).
I hope this is not an inconvenience for you. I've moved all of the rime families for the letter I to
Word Way Letter I, letter a rime
families to
Word Way Letter A, etc.
Some teachers have
recently asked for handwriting practice for several word families. If
you have one that you'd like right away, please let me know at
carl1404@msn.com.
This colorful chart is perfect for the beginning writer to use as a
reference. Duplicate, laminate and place one in each student's
writing folder. The illustrations all depict children who are busy
and involved, an attribute that will be sure to appeal to your
students.
Word Family Resources
Cernek, Kim, 2000. Exploring Word Families: Using Word Patterns
to Build Beginning Reading Skills. Creative Teaching Press.
Lynch, Judy, 1999. Easy Lessons for Teaching Word Families
(Grades K-2).
Novelli,Joan, 2002. 30 Wonderful Word Family Games: With Pull-Out Poster Game.
Rosenberg, Mary, 2001. The Word Family Activity Book (Grades
K-2).
The Penny Push is a strategy for developing and practicing one
phonemic awareness task: phoneme segmentation.
During the activity the children say, hear and push a penny for each
sound they hear in a word. There are no symbols or letters involved.
Research shows that the more senses you use to teach something, the
more likely it is that the at-risk learner will grasp the concept.
This document provides an in-depth look at Elkonin boxes and the
Penny Push.
Monster Mouth
(Lyrics: Cherry
Carl Tune: I’m a
Little Teapot)
I’m a Monster Mouth and I love to munch
On pictures and words for my letter lunch.
Open up my mouth and drop them in;
Then close it again to see me grin!
Note: I wrote this song to go with the munching monsters made with
the plastic trash cans with the swinging lids. I found the idea on
Teachers.net and absolutely love it. You can store your word/picture
cards in it. If you'd like directions and/or pictures, go to Marcia
Goudie's Muncher Gallery at
http://www.marcias-lesson-links.com/Muncher%20Monsters.html
Count the Syllables
The purpose of this activity is to promote the development of
early phonemic awareness skills. The categories of the activities will also
serve as a tool for developing and practicing vocabulary for second language
learners.
(Tune: "Down by the Station")
Down in the first
grade,
Early in the morning,
See the ready readers
All in a row.
When we come to new words,
We know how to read them.
Chunk! Chunk! Sound them out!
Off we go!
(Tune: "Oh, Where Has My Little Dog Gone?")
Oh, what do you do when
you come to a word?
A word that is new to you?
Do you cry and pout, stomp your feet and shout?
Oh, what, oh, what do you do?
Well, we don't give up on those really hard words.
We know all the things we can do.
We work really hard 'til we figure them out.
'Cause that's what good readers do!
Perseverance!
Sunny
Singer
(Tune: You Are
My Sunshine)
My name is Sunny, Sunny Singer.
I’d like to sing some songs with you.
We’ll sing of letters and their silly sounds
And we’ll see what letters can do!
There’s l – i - c – k, and k – i – c – k.
Tell me what those letters say.
There’s p – i - c – k, and s – i - c – k.
That is spelling the –ick family way.
There’s n – i - c – k, and t – i - c – k.
What is c - h – i - c – k?
And how about q – u – i – c – k
When we’re spelling the –ick family way?
Cherry Carl, 2004
Note:
Sunny Girl is a puppet that I bought last year in New York and she
just looked like the type to sing word building songs. She sat in my
sister's kitchen until I was forced to write the song! LOL! Sunny is
the redhead on the right. I'm a redhead, so it was perfect for me!
The company has multicultural glove puppets, community helpers, and
much more. I also bought a clown girl with pockets to use for
introducing sounds. The manufacturer is located in Florida, but the
website below provides a list of retailers. You can, however, see a
large assortment of pictures of the puppets available.
For two letter rimes, just change the spellings and the lines to the
song:
The following activities have been used to
reinforce decoding and encoding through analogy, onset and rime, and rhyme.
"Is there another word that I know that has this chunk? If I take this
letter and put these letters with it, what word do I have now?"
c a t - c + m = m a t
Each word family have at least 20 - 30
different activities to allow for differentiated instruction.
Please note that those that are complete and
ready to use are underlined. Most of the
Stationery, Word Building Mats and Recording Sheets are ready and so are the
Shape Books, Word Lists, Cloze the Gap, Alphabet Alley and Configuration
Stations. When I have time, I'll finish the Word Slides, Puzzles, etc. We
can dream, huh? If you've been with me since the beginning of this website,
you'll notice that what started out as one worksheet is now many. I still
get requests for additional word families and I work on them as soon as I
get them. I know that your requests are for your students and so I try to
get them to you in a timely fashion. Don't be afraid to ask because I have
templates and clipart collections for each word family. I'm still open for
suggestions for other types of activities to add to this section.
The graphics are from PrintMaster, which has a great
collection of kid friendly pictures, and from Microsoft ClipArt (online).
Teacher Tips!
The following ideas and/or
comments about using the word family activities come from teachers
through my e-mail:
carl1404@msn.com. If you have
found success in a special way, and would like to share your idea,
please let me know and I'll post it here. Be sure to include your
grade level and location. For instance, some teachers of second
language learners have found it to be very useful and so have
resource specialists.
A
special thanks goes to Vickie Schultz. She creates a power point
presentation every week with the words and pictures that sounds
incredible. Her students can access it themselves to study their
weekly spelling words. She's sent a sample for the -op family and
the -in families and I've posted it below. I'm going to call
these presentations Power Practice and create some additional
ones. Vickie also suggested an idea file so that teachers can
share activities that they use with the word families, for
instance, writing -op words on paper popcorn, making popcorn, etc.
Anyone interested in an idea sharing file for each word family. If
you have an idea that you'd like to share, I'll post it with the
applicable word family and give you credit, of course!
Chasity and Karen in Santee, California send a spelling homework
letter to the parents of their first graders. It includes a link
to this page so that students can select from the word family
activities for that week. Parents can assist in the selection, but
those first graders are doing well at self-selecting items that
are appropriate for their skill level.
A special thanks to Fred
Duffelmeyer of Iowa State University. He discovered this site and has since
offered many valuable suggestions for improvement! Thank you, Fred! As a result
of his input I reformatted the stationery activities so that
they're more appropriate for second graders. There's more room to
write and less graphic. He also proofread every single cloze
activity! Typos do happen and I'm grateful to anyone who
lets me know when that occurs so that I can fix any errors.
Geri
Rightmyer, a kindergarten teacher, had a wonderful idea for using
the alphabet book with stickers from the Alphabet Avenue page. She
says: "I took the
alphabet book and the alphabet stickers and made a book using the
pictures and velcro so the children could use it over. I mounted
everything on heavy paper with the letters forming the basis of
the book. I then took the stickers and mounted them on heavy
paper and cut them out. Today some of the kids were putting
the pictures into the book just to be helpful. It was very
interesting to see how they talked their way through the names of
the pictures and decided which letter it belonged to. They choose
to do it at playtime and seemed to really enjoy themselves.
My class is an inclusion
class and I have two autistic children in my room. Learning the
sounds is very difficult for them so I am excited about some of
your other ideas and how I can adapt them for repeat usage." She's
going to send a photograph of the completed book so that others
can use her idea. Thanks, Geri!
Next?
Word Families,
Onsets and Rimes, Phonograms:
They're all the same!
Literacy teachers like to say that using onsets and rimes teaches
children through analogy. I like to think that the process enables
children to take ownership of their reading and writing. "I can
write at, so I can write cat and lots of other words." It makes
believers out of young children who previously said, "I can’t!" when
asked to read or write such words. I started teaching in 1967 (the
dark ages) and we used what we called word families. Now we call
them rimes and linguists prefer to say phonograms, but to the
classroom teacher they are a tool to move their children into
literacy. In 1970, Wylie and Durrell outlined 37 commonly used
patterns in their book, Teaching Vowels Through Phonograms.
Those words will be in a red font in the list below. Many authors
have published lists for facilitating the use of rimes in their
phonics, phonemic awareness and spelling programs. Fountas and
Pinnell have made things easy for us. They have a complete list in
Word Matters: Teaching Phonics and Spelling in the
Reading/Writing Classroom (Heinemann). Their list contains
single syllable words that would be appropriate for young learners.
For multisyllabic words, older readers and writers may spell one
syllable at a time.
If
you’re interested in using Mother Goose and rimes as part of your
first grade spelling, see my list on the Mother Goose part of this
web site).
The
list that I have here is in alphabetical order from left to right.
If some word families appear twice, it’s because they should be
(i.e. -ome as in home and in some). Unfortunately,
some of these rimes do have lengthy word lists. I am only developing
activities for the most common rimes and for those that are
frequently requested by teachers and parents to support
spelling and decoding programs.
