BUILDING WORDS

The following is based on the work of Patricia Cunningham and Tim Rasinski.

the TCRWP posted a pic from Chrissa's classroom! :D

PART 1: MAKING THE WORDS
Tell students which words to make and give them clues as necessary.
Ex.

• "Change just the first letter to spell..."
• "Change one letter to spell..."
• "Add one letter to spell..."
• "If you move the letters in this word around, these same letters can spell a different word."

*Tips: 

• We find that the magnetic letters are easier to manipulate and store than paper letter cards.
• Make alphabet charts and vowel charts available to students. 
• For our beginning ELLs, we like to have pictures of the words prepared if possible so they are exposed to the meanings of new vocabulary words.
• Differentiate by using the appropriate lesson for each of your groups. Who's working on final consonants? Who's working on spelling with medial short vowels?

Show each word on an index card and put them in a pocket chart so students can check. The quick pacing of the lessons is important so it's best to have word cards prepped before hand. There are other places outside of this lesson for students to write the words.

PART 2: SORTING THE WORDS
Sort the rhyming words and then guide students to notice the similar spelling patterns. ex. "cat, bat, rat all rhyme and they have -at!" (If you have more time, you could also sort by first letter, same vowel, or kinds of words: nouns, verbs, etc. before sorting rhyming words.)

PART 3: TRANSFERRING WORDS
"We can use the words we sorted to help us read and write new words." Show students a new word; can they use the patterns they just noticed to read the new word? Ask them to help you write a word or sentence; can they use the patterns they just noticed to write a new word?

Check out these resources for more information:

We posted some of the beginning lessons for building words with short words in our TPT store.

Have a great week!
Chrissa & Stefanie