Quack. Snack. Paddy-Whack~
Word Families have a special place in my heart! I can actually remember sitting in my kindergarten class, eagerly spinning a handmade paper wheel. You know the one, right? With each spin, a new letter would appear inside the box. I’d sit there and try to decide if the new letter would create a word. If it didn’t, it would still provide some entertainment with whatever silly word it created. As a teacher, I use this entertainment factor to my advantage. When students create one of these “nonsense words,” I really play it up Dr. Seuss style. “What’s that you say- can I borrow your sop wop?” Or “Away with that smelly yat, you zat!” -Insert 5 year olds laughing and believing you’re the coolest person they’ve ever met!
These Word Building Suitcases are made up of 20 different word bases, or “word families.” Word Families are groups of words that have common patterns, with similar sounds and letters. Teaching word families is an essential part of reading instruction. They are one of the easiest, most enjoyable ways to develop great readers! We’ve all heard the new reader, slowly sounding out words letter-by-letter. It’s adorable when it’s your own child, but the listening requires lots of patience. Read: A LOT of patience. Word families work to make magic happen here, as they help children start to pay attention to patterns that are found in words. Training children to read words in “chunks” improves their ability to read more fluently. And what do you know?! They soon begin to sound less like a robot! Score!
If you’re just introducing the concept of a Word Family to your students or child, you may want to explain that while all families are different these words are a “family”- and have the same last name and live in the same house. I enjoy letting the students decide what kind of house this will be and draw it large on the white board or chart paper. Leave a blank line in front of the word base. Write the word base at least 5 times inside the house. You can make a letter choice box at the top of the paper, as some students may have difficulty thinking of letters to try at first. Experiment with adding different letters in front of the word base and practice reading the new word with your students. To make this more interactive, have students sort the words you create as either Real or Nonsense Words. Download the word chart to get started!
You can easily extend this activity by having students write a sentence and draw a picture to match what they wrote!
