strategy 16:
Making Words
What is it? Making words is a teacher directed spelling activity. The task for students is to arrange letter cards to spell words. Teachers generally choose a five to eight letter word and prepare cards for this activity. Purpose? The children use the cards to practice spelling words and to review spelling patterns and rules. As children are making words, they are practicing what they know about phoneme-grapheme correspondences and spelling patterns. Teachers can also then gain feedback on what the students understand, correct any confusions and review phonics and spelling concepts if needed. Implementation: The first step is to prepare a set of small letter cards with multiple copies of each letter, especially common letters such as a, e, I, r, s and t They can be lowercase letters on one side and the uppercase letters on the other side. Teachers then choose a key word from a book children are reading and then prepare a set of letter cards that children manipulate to spell words. Teachers do not disclose the word to the students but rather just hand out all the letter cards. Teachers then ask children to separate their letter cards by putting consonants in one group and vowels in another group. The teacher leads children as they create a variety of words using the letters. Children take their letter cards and spell words containing two, three, four, five, six or more letters, and they list the words they can spell on a chart. The teacher’s role is to monitor the students work and they can encourage students to fix any misspelled words. The teacher can then ask children to share the words they found and teachers may at this time suggest any words the class missed or point out any recently taught spelling patterns. This strategy is great for English learners to play in small groups because it helps them to practice spelling strategies and skills. It’s effective because the activity is nonthreatening and hands on. |
Illustration or Example:
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