A post about the importance of word families and how to teach reading with word families. Daily suggestions, ideas, and activities for teachers provided.
Teaching Word Families
Today I am sharing about one part of my word study program, how to teach reading with word families. I will be sharing how I run my schedule during the week and provide you with a day-to-day plan of action. I have seen a lot of success with this program. My students are thoroughly engaged, actively learning, and building their reading and spelling skills.
Why Teach Word Families?
Learning to read the English language is a difficult task. The English language follows so many different patterns and rules that it is often confusing for our younger students learning to read.
Word families, also called phonograms or “chunks,” provide us with groups of words that have a predictable pattern or “chunk.” These words have the same ending, and they all rhyme. This makes learning a set of words (a word family) easier on our beginning readers.
Word Families Throughout the Week
After learning our word families for the week, my students can read and spell a group of words independently. They feel incredibly successful at their accomplishment. They now have a larger bank of words they can read in the books they are encountering.
Teaching my students word families is an incredibly efficient way for me to teach my students how to read. Since we learn word families each week, I wanted to create a set of activities that students find fun and engaging, yet help them to become fluent in reading the words within a word family.
Monday Activities for Teaching Word Families
Tuesday Activities for Teaching Word Families
Wednesday Activities for Teaching Word Families
Thursday Activities for Teaching Word Families
During our morning meeting, we take out our small whiteboards and markers and practice recording our words. Sometimes they sit with a partner and quiz each other, and sometimes I will give them words to record. This exercise is a quick assessment for me to check how they are doing. This activity could also be a part of your small group time. We work more on word meaning. We have a few activities that we rotate through each week to keep things interesting. For instance, we complete our fill-in sheets for morning work, where we have to pick the correct word to fit in an empty space. We also create read, draw, and color books where we have to read a sentence, dray its meaning, and color the picture.
Friday Activities for Teaching Word Families
Word Families Homework
Resources for Teaching Word Families
See the word families resource in action!
Classroom Materials for Teaching Word Families
FREE -AT Word Family Activities
To get started, check out the free downloadable resource: short ‘a’ vowel word family pack of activities. Click the image below to get your copy!
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Great post, Elyse! So many great ideas to help teach beginning reading to our little friends! Pinning now! 🙂
Thanks so much, Ashley!
These look great- just out of curiosity you say you work on two families at a time- can you give an example of how you’d do that? Introduce both at the same time, or one and then on Wed another one added ?
Hi Kate! Yup usually I teach 2 word families at the same time and introduce them together. We mix up the follow-up activities after so they get plenty of practice with both sets of words. That being said some classes may not be suited for 2 and would be better suited with only 1. All the best!
None of the links to TPT are working. Is the Phonics Are Fun Bundle still available? I love it!
You can find them at https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Word-Family-Activities-for-Short-Vowels-Bundle-1943273
How do you use Word Families in a Grade 1/2 split class? Thanks! 🙂
I choose two word families to focus on each week, one for each grade. Kids participate in learning both each day.
Do you have the citations for word families being a proven way to teach reading? Need them to prove to others who doubt and want science.