May 13

Dahlia and I have been noticing how engaged our students are during our Word Study (phonics) time in class. Sometimes the simplicity of using a whiteboard and marker instead of pencil and paper can be exciting for our students. 

Recently we have been learning about glued sounds, word endings and vowel teams. Word Ladders is an activity we have done as a whole class as well as in our small groups with students. Although this activity is typically completed on a worksheet, our class has been using whiteboards instead. The teacher prompts the students to write a word on their boards and then gives a “clue” to change a letter/sound in the word to make a new word. Learning to manipulate sounds in a word has helped our students recognize patterns in words and improved their encoding skills. 

Aside from supporting their phonics skills, the game-like nature of this activity has really engaged our students. Dahlia and I decided it might be fun to have our students try being the leaders of a Word Ladder activity. 

We agreed that having the students create the activity from scratch would probably be too challenging for our students, so we decided to provide students with a list of words for which they would have to create clues for changing.

We allowed students to choose a partner to work with and find a space to work together in the classroom. Students were excited to give it a try! Each pair was given a Word Ladders worksheet with a list of pre-set words and space to write their own clues. 

As we circulated around the room, we observed a lot of great conversation during work time. We also observed excitement as students thought of a good idea for a clue, students figuring out ways to “share the pen” and take turns writing, and partners working through disagreements.

For partners who felt they were done, we encouraged them to “test it out”. Pairing up with another partnership, students got to be the “teacher” and give their word ladder clues to their “students”. We could tell that the students really loved having the opportunity to be the teacher. Students also enjoyed having the opportunity to try out their classmate’s activity on their whiteboard as well. 

Challenge:

Students who finished early were given the opportunity to try a challenge. The challenge was to create a Word Ladder activity from scratch. Students would have the opportunity to use their own words (instead of a predetermined list of words) and create their own clues. One partnership was able to complete this challenge.

The girls were so excited to create their own activity and even more excited to try it out. As we tried it out together, the girls discovered the need for some revising. They revised clues to make them more specific and changed a couple of words after realizing that they changed too many sounds from one word to the next. 

Overall, our class had a lot of fun trying out this activity. They enjoyed working in partnerships and really took ownership of their work. We would love to incorporate more of these opportunities in our classroom. 

Jenna - I love these activities and love how you had students take ownership on the word ladders activity. I have not thought to do it that way before, but will deifnitely be trying it out. Looks like fun! - Lyndsay