Word Study Routines

Last year, I posted here about how we review rhyming word families, using the Words Their Way program.  This year, I've been thinking about how I want to set my students up for success with this program once again.  In the past, I've noticed that although most kiddos appear to be very successful with their sorts during the week, they often struggle to incorporate taught spelling patterns into their own writing.  I think this has to do with the lack of context with the words during word study, and sometimes a mis-match of skills and sort (i.e. kiddos working on sorts that are too hard or too easy).  

This year I'm trying to incorporate more practice opportunities into our word study routine, including building rimes (adding different consonants to at), writing words, and reading rhymes.  This week I started by having the kids think of words that rhyme with cat, before we even looked at the sort.  I drew pictures of the -at words they thought of on a large "at" (see picture).  Then I modeled using the WTW sort to match -at words and pictures.  

The following day, we used magnets to create -at words, and then the kiddos got to cut out their own pictures and words.  While the class worked on matching their sort pictures and words, I pulled a few kiddos over to make sure they could independently read the words, with and without the pictures.  This coming week we will use our sorts again for a few simple games.  The kiddos will write words to match pictures and fill in blanks in sentences using the same words.  They will get to highlight rhyming words in phonics readers (if I can find them in our storage closet ;) )  Finally, I am hoping to give a short weekly check -- quiz -- to see if they are able to write the practiced words as well as new rhyming word or two.

Hopefully these extra activities will help the kiddos generalize what they learn during word study into other times of the day, when they are reading and writing independently!