Happy December friends! This month we're discussing how we make word study work in our rooms. For me, it changes ALL the time. In kindergarten, word study is mostly a letter study. Who doesn't love focusing and studying a particular letter? Here's a few things that I do when focusing on the letters.
I love using these letter riddles. I read the riddle to them and we figure out which letter it is. They are super easy for the kids to guess and it helps them think about the way each of the letters are formed or the sound the letter makes. We usually add this little letter/picture flipper to it as well. They have to sort between pictures that do/do not begin with that sound and glue the correct ones down.
Another favorite is our bucket of words that we add to our reading notebook as well. They use these later when we are writing or thinking back for certain words that begin with a certain letter. We add a sticky note on top to keep the letters from falling out when they're handling their notebooks. Super simple word sort makes our "letter study" so much fun.
Just another example of our letter sort. We say each picture and make the beginning sound. This is one of the easiest ways to help students distinguish the all words don't make the same sounds. These activities above are all from my Alphabet Interactive Notebook.
In first grade, we do actual word studies as we study word families, vowel patterns, and so on. One of my newest favorite things to do is to use these interactive powerpoints. Earlier in the year, we reviewed our short vowels. These were EXTREMELY easy to use in centers, whole group and I even used them a few times during small group.
Here's a quick video into what one looks like.
We use our iPads the most, but we've also used our lined whiteboards to practice writing the letters correctly on the lines. I found some lined whiteboards at Lakeshore a few years ago. They were not the full sized white boards, but a long rectangle with only one line on them. These are PERFECT for writing just one or two words. We use these all the time for word study and in small group. (I forgot to snap a picture of these!)
When we focus on word families, I love to put up our Word Family anchor charts. This was a HUGE hit in kindergarten. We practiced word families using word searches, word family booklets, a search and find and through reading/writing/stamping. For a word study to be effective, you have to completely allow your students to word solely on that skill.
Word study really isn't that hard to implement. Find something simple that the kids will enjoy and use that! My kids also love things like this! When we worked on plural nouns, this was a quick way to allow them to practice adding s, seeing it visually and reading each of the words. We used these in small group and practiced that skill within two minutes.
What's your favorite way to work on words?
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