Word Work

Considerations:

Since phonemic awareness is a predictor of reading success, priority should be given to activities focusing on this skill over rhyming.

Phonemic awareness can be effectively practiced in conjunction with phonics, so as soon as students can connect letters to sounds, they should be practicing phonics activities.

Sorts

Provide students picture sorts and show them how to sort by a specific phonological feature, such as rhyming, beginning sound, ending sound, vowel sound, etc. Have students complete the sort in the station and then say the word for each picture to check and make sure it is in the correct category. Have them paste the sorts so it can be checked.

Sample Activities from Florida Center for Reading Research:

• "Pack a Backpack"

• "Sound It-Bag It"

• "Sound Bags"

• "Sound Train"

• "Sound Pie"

• "Rime House"

• "Sound Quest"

Phoneme Segmentation Games

Provide students a deck of picture cards. Follow the directions on the activities below. Students should log the number of phonemes on a recording sheet so it can be checked later.

Sample Activities from Florida Center for Reading Research:

• "Phoneme Hopscotch"

• "The Sound Game"

• "Sound Spin"

Matching Uppercase and Lowercase

Provide students manipulatives that allow them to match uppercase and lowercase letters. When they find a match, they should tell their group the letter name and sound that they matched. For example, "I found a match! D says /d/!" The key is to always have students connect letter names with letter sounds-- even if an activity below does not specify this.

Sample Activities from Florida Center for Reading Research:

• "Alphabet Borders"

• "Alphabet Arc"

• "Clip a Letter"

• "Letter Cards"

• "Alphabet Memory Game"

Letter Hunt

Provide students a poem or a soon-to-be-decodable text with an abundance of a specific letter they have recently learned. Have students circle all of the places the letter is included in the text. Then, they should tell a partner what letter they found and what sound the letter makes. Example:  "I found the h's. H says /h/." The key is to always have students connect letter names with letter sounds-- even if an activity below does not specify this.

Sample Activities from Florida Center for Reading Research:

• "Poetry Pen"

• "Venn Diagram Letter Name Sort"

Which Letter Makes This Sound?

Provide students pictures or manipulatives that allow them to segment the initial phoneme in the word. Have students match the letter to the picture/manipulative by putting items in baggies, baskets, bags, etc. 

Sample Activities from Florida Center for Reading Research:

• "Brown Bag It"

• "Words Around Us Memory Game"

• "Letter-Sound Train"

• "Medial Phoneme Spin"

• "Letter-Sound Dominoes"

• "Letter-Sound Pyramid"

• "Letter-Sound Folder Set" (This does not have to require a folder.)

• "Letter-Sound Bingo"

• "Letter-Sound Match"

• "Fluency Letter Wheel"

Handwriting Foundations

Letter formation activities should keep students as close to the physical act of handwriting as possible. Creating letters out of Playdough is further away from actual handwriting than writing letters in the air, on the carpet, or on another textured surface. Students should have a writing utensil in their hand for the majority of letter formation activities. This develops their strength, stamina, and their ability to connect what a letter looks like with how it feels to write the letter. 

Teacher-led instruction should include: 1) The teacher modeling letter formation with their whole arm or index finger in the air. 2) Students "air writing" the letter. 3) Students tracing the letter with arrows showing them the direction of the strokes. 4) Students covering the model letter and writing the letter from memory several times. If possible, they should say the letter's name as they write it. 5) Students circling their "best" letter. 

For an independent station, have students complete #3-5. They should not write the letter more than a handful of times in one sitting. This activity should be paired with something else, as a 15-minute station solely on handwriting can be too long.

• Consider using printable letters with arrows, such as the free download from This Reading Mama in conjunction with the HMH Into Reading Handwriting printables. 

• On the digital HMH site, select Kindergarten as the grade level and search "handwriting." 

• HMH is developing more handwriting lessons and materials, but they are all not available yet. They can be found by searching "Structured Literacy" on the HMH portal.

Time Me

Have students trace lowercase letters (or better yet-- words made up of the letters learned). Provide the group with a one-minute timer. Have a student set the time, and students write as many letters neatly as they can in one minute. They should not compete against each other but compete against themselves. Have them circle their best letters. They can reset the timer multiple times to try to beat their high score.

Tap It, Map It, Graph It

Provide students a set of pictures illustrating words with a particular phonics feature. For each word, have students tap the phonemes (individual sounds), use manipulatives/chips to move one chip for each sound as they say each sound, and then spell the word using sound boxes. To see this strategy in action, check out Tap It, Map It, Graph It, Zap It. It is best for students to physically write the letters in the word, even if they use letter tiles as a scaffold.

Picture It, Build It, Read It, Write It

Students look at a picture (ex. bird), build the word with letter cards, magnetic letters, or letter tiles, read the word out loud, and then write it on a page that will be turned into the teacher. It's important that students handwrite each word, in addition to using letter tiles.

Sample Activities from Florida Center for Reading Research:

• "A Digraph a Word" (This can be done with any feature.)

• "Say and Write Letters"

• "Map-a-Word"

Build, Draw, Write, Swap

Have students create words with a particular feature using letter cards, magnetic letters, or letter tiles. After they build the word, have them draw a picture of it and write the word under the picture. Then, they should swap pictures and words with a partner and have the partner read the word.

Sample Activities from Florida Center for Reading Research:

• "'R' Caterpillars"

• "Front or Back" Morpheme Game (Have students draw an illustration and write a caption for each word.)

Sorts with Pictures and Spelling

Have students sort words based on their feature. Then, have them write the words on a chart and draw a picture of a few words to show their meaning. It's important that students connect the words to their meanings. If this is not included in activities below, it should be added.

Sample Activities from Florida Center for Reading Research:

• "Canned Sort" (This can be done with any feature.)

• "Same But Different"

• "Syllable Closed Sort" 

• "Spell and Sort"

• "Short and Long"

• "Sounds of Silence"

• "Base Word Sort" (Write each word in a sentence.)

Real or Nonsense?

Provide students the letters of the alphabet in three piles. Consonants should be in the first and last piles. Vowels should be in the middle pile. Students take turns flipping to the next letter in each set of cards. Students take turns reading the word, and then they discuss if the word is real or nonsense. If it is real, they should tell their partner what it means.

Sample Activities from Florida Center for Reading Research:

• "Three-in-One"

• "Digraph Delight" (This can be done with any feature.)

• "Digraph Roll-a-Word" (This can be done with any feature.)

• "Letter Cube Blending" 

• "Word Blender"  (This can be done with any feature.)

• "Word Spinners" (This can be done with any feature.)

• "Flip Manipulating Books" (This can be done with any feature, and it can be done as a sort rather than a flip book.)

• "Silent 'e' Changes"

• "Vowel Slide"

• "Compound Concentration"

Word Ladders

Have students create word ladders for real words, using a pre-determined set of letters. See the activity below for templates.

Sample Activities from Florida Center for Reading Research:

• "Word Steps"

Syllable Mismatch

Provide students cards with syllables on them. Have them log real and nonsense words on a recording sheet, or provide them with pictures of words they need to build and then write.

Sample Activities from Florida Center for Reading Research:

• "Picture It In Syllables"

• "Syllable Words and Pictures"

• "Piece It Together" (Add an element where students have to use the word's meaning, such as writing the word in a sentence.)

Syllable Chunking

Provide students with cards that have multisyllabic words on them. Have them cut the words into syllables and paste them onto a recording sheet so each chunk can be easily read. Then, have students write the word in a sentence. It's important for students to connect to the word's meaning, so this last step should not be excluded.

Sample Activities from Florida Center for Reading Research:

• "Syllable Cut-Ups"

• "Map and Swoop" (Have students write each word in a sentence.)

• "Syllable Share" (Have students write each word in a sentence.)

• "Affix Hunt" (Have students write each word in a sentence.)

• "Build a Word"

Partner Dictation (or spice it up with a Headbands game!)

Pair students up. Have one partner read a decodable sentence to the other partner. Both partners write the sentence without looking at it. When it is time for the next sentence, the other partner reads it. The partner who reads the sentence gets the advantage of seeing the words in print, but this partner still has to write the sentence from memory.  Roles switch, so one partner does not have the advantage the whole time. After writing four sentences, have students choose one to two sentences to illustrate.

To spice it up, provide students headbands made out of blank sentence strips and index cards. Give each student their own sentence strip so they are not sharing headbands. Have one student clip a sentence written on an index card onto the headband. The partner reads the sentence to the student with the headband. Both partners write the sentence. Then, they check themselves by reading what is on the headband.

Look-Alike Words

Provide students a picture card with three potential spellings of the word being illustrated. Have students write the correctly-spelled word on their paper. Check out Savannah Campbell's example in her blog post "5 Ideas for Daily Spelling Review." 

Go Fish

Provide students with word cards containing words with a few different features. Make sure there are an even number of each feature, because pairs will need to be made. Students play "Go Fish" with the cards, looking for words that have the same feature. If they find a pair, they should say, for example, "I have dream and stream. They have the long /e/ sound spelled 'ea.'" Then, they tell the other player the meaning of each of the words. Example: "A dream is what you think about while you are sleeping. A stream is a narrow strip of water."

Sample Activities from Florida Center for Reading Research:

• "Fishing for Vowel Digraphs"

High Frequency Words: Heart Word Activities

Have students segment high frequency words into sound boxes, spell the words, and draw a pictures or use them in sentences. Students should draw a heart over any irregular features in the words. See the last two slides on the High Frequency Word Materials for a printable page for students, as well as an example.

High Frequency Words: Sound It Out Game

Have students use different, fun ways to segment their high frequency words before they spell them. Check out the Sound It Out Directions and print the Sound It Out page for the group. A modified version can be used, as well.

High Frequency Word Sentences

Have students write sentences with recently-learned high frequency words and then draw a picture to show the sentence's meaning.

Fluency Games

Provide students with decodable words to read, time themselves, and chart their progress. See the activities for examples.

Sample Activities from Florida Center for Reading Research:

• "Speedy Rime Words"

• "Digraph and Diphthong Dash"

• "Word Part Race"

• "Syllable Speed Practice"

• "Word Part Rush"

• "Affix Zip"

• "Affix Whiz"

Re-Reading Decodable Texts

Have students work with a partner to re-read a decodable text, alternating sentences.

Sample Activities from Florida Center for Reading Research:

• "Rereading Decodable Text"