How do you Word Family?

Hey All!

Today I thought I'd chat a little bit about word families.  I really enjoy teaching word families and I am a firm believer that teaching these patterns within words can help emergent readers tremendously!  Now I know some people refer to them as word chunks, but I've always used the term family because I think it helps connect the ideas for little learners and I just like how it easily ties into activities such as word family houses.  Either way the concept is the same:  to teach students how to recognize patterns within words.

So how do I do this?  First off here's the progression of how I teach word families:

1. Introduce one word family at a time.

2. Compare word families with the same vowel sound.

3. Compare rimes with different short vowels.

This is the suggested progression of teaching found in Francine Johnston's The Timing and Teaching of Word Families.  This is a great resource if you're looking for some reading.

Ok, so when teaching about a word family for the first time I start of by simply introducing the word family.  To do this I create a house chart with the word family listed at the top on the roof.  On the body of the house I list the rime 5 to 6 more times.  The rime is listed several times because this is where we will build the words by onset and rime. I find it easiest to tape it up to a white board and then place the letters that we will use to build words along the side. I learned this idea from my supervisor teacher back when I was student teaching. 

After introducing the word family it's time to make words that are in this family.  To do this I pull names and invite students up to the board to pick a letter.  After a student picks a letter we first name the letter and say the letter sound.  Then the student places the letter on the chart next to the word family.  At this point we blend the onset and rime 2 times, sometimes more.  We stop and discuss word meaning and act out the word.  Then the student removes the magnetic letter and writes in the letter with a marker.  While the student is doing this we all say the letter formation chant and air write the letter.  This process continues until we have made all 5 or 6 words.

After making all the word family words we are ready to read and sing.  To start we read through all the words in list fashion. We do this by blending the onset and rime and then saying the word.

Example: "c-at... cat"  "m-at..mat" Next we sing our word family song.

Graphics from Whimsy Workshop teaching @

 http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Whimsy-Workshop-Teaching

We sing the song 2-3 times, each time reading through the list of word family words. To help keep students engaged I swap out the word "read" with things like stomp, sing, clap, cheer etc.

This activity takes us about 10 minutes to complete and is always great fun!  Follow up activities/mini-lessons consist of sorting words that either are or are not in this word family, adding words to our list, feeding the word family monster, word family books and more!

Here is a little word family book that I created that'd be perfect for word work centers, homework, or as a follow up lesson.  It is no prep!  Just pick, print, and go!  For this activity students have to look at the picture and say the word family word aloud, write the full word, and then color.  I also left one spot blank for them to draw their own picture because I like to see what they know on their own.  I always hang our word family house chart so they have a reference in class as well.

If you like these little books click the photo to check them out in my TpT store :)

So how do you word family?

Morning Message

Hi All!  Do you start your day with a morning message?  

If you saw my weekly schedule on the last post you may have noticed that I put in a morning message for each day of the week.  I actually think that the morning message is one of my favorite parts of a kindergarten day.  I remember how much my kinders loved it!  I think they enjoyed always starting the day off with a friendly message about our day's events and I know they had fun coming up to the board and searching for answers to the questions asked.  I even had parents comment on how their student would tell them all about something they learned or got to do during morning message time.  Now although I love it and the kids love it, I still need to make sure that I can get as much learning out of this fun time as I can.

I remember back to my first year teaching when I decided to start my day with a morning message.  I thought wahoo, this is going to be easy!  Well, let me tell you the first few weeks were not so great.  You see, I'm gonna admit, I wrote up a message, read it to the class, tried to ask some questions, lost their attention, and basically FAILED... TERRIBLY!  I knew right away that I needed more direction so I called up my mom (who is an expert morning messenger) and had her tell me exactly what she did for her morning message time.  I also searched the internet for information on "what to do"  with the morning message and began writing it out in my plan book.  Seriously I wrote the message out word for word and each question I wanted to ask with what it's.  Yes, it was like a script! HaHa

Now although my first year was a little crazy and I, a little overly prepared, it allowed me to really understand the purpose of a morning message and helped me to know all the benefits a morning message could make.  So the next year I did the morning message I got a little better, and the year after that I was starting to feel more like a pro.  But there's always been one thing that bothered me.  When I'm doing the morning message sometimes it seems like I'm always asking the same questions in the exact same way or that I focus on one standard way more than another or only talking about some standards for a day or two.  So I got to thinking and I decided that I'd create morning message sticks!  

I really think these sticks are fun and have a purpose!  I created these sticks using four kindergarten common core strands and color coded questions/tasks by these strands.  I included print concepts, phonological awareness, phonics and word recognition, and conventions.  I am so excited because now I have a set of over 70 prepared questions or tasks that cover 4 different strands of standards!  Plus I think the kids will be more engaged because they'll get to "pick a stick."  

So how do I plan to use these?  Well, I think for me while doing my planning for the next week I'd pick 2-3 questions/concepts that I want to introduce, practice, and focus on.  I'd teach these on the first day of the next week and then add them to the jar for "picking."  This will help me to vary the questions and ensure I have a variety of standards.  I of course can always elaborate on a pulled stick or differentiate the question or task but at least I'll always have an idea ready to go that's on target.  Here's what they look like finished?  I can't wait to try these!  

If you like what you see, grab your own set at my teachers pay teachers store. 

All set and ready :)

Here's a list of all the questions/tasks already prepared on one quick look sheet.

Here's what the sheets look like before you cut each question and glue to sticks.