One skill we practice daily in kindergarten is making words. No matter what time of the year it is, we work on creating and reading simple 3 and 4 letter CVC words. Being able to make those words is a big step for any early reader and helps them learn to manipulate letters and the sounds they make. Each time we play with letters and sounds my students are able to further strengthen their word making abilities.
From the beginning of the year in kindergarten we practice making 3 and 4 letter CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words in some form. One of the ways I've found most engaging is to invite my students to be a part of making the words. When I involve them in making the words, they are better able to remember them because they were physically involved in creating the words.
To prepare for this activity I make a list of the words we will make. In this case, we were making words in the "-et" word family and then worked with changing sounds in words. Next, I write all the consonants we will need to make those words on blue index cards and the vowels on the pink index cards. I then place each card into one of the pockets of the Pocket Pinnies.
I also get out my set of Red & Blue Letter Tiles and Rainbow Magnetic Letters. I have each sorted into a divided container where each letter has its own compartment. I pull out all the letters we will need to make these words and place one set into a plastic bowl for each of my students. I pass out the Pocket Pinnies to part of my students and whiteboards and the tiles or letters to everyone else in the class; the "audience". I am careful to reassure all my students that if they do not get a turn to wear one of the Pocket Pinnies in this lesson, they will in a future lesson.
When I start the lesson, I ask the letters that will help us make "-et" to stand together. Each of these students makes sure to face the "audience" that will help them make the words.
I ask those students to help us in creating the first word, "met". Students who are not wearing letters, use the name of the student who is wearing the letter "m" and ask them to stand next to the student who is wearing the letter "e". We read the word as a whole group, saying each sound and then blending them together to read the word. My students who have tiles then work to make the word on their whiteboards.
We then move on to the next word. The student who is wearing the Pocket Pinnie with the letter "m" hands me their pinnie as they head back to sit down. This helps me visually keep track of who is still wearing a Pocket Pinnie and which words we still need to make.
During another lesson, we worked on changing the beginning, middle, and ending sounds in words. I prepared the blue and pink index cards in the same way as before. After each of these lessons, I keep the blue and pink index cards and sort them so they are alphabetical. This makes it easy to grab the letters that I need for future lessons. I used the Rainbow Magnetic Letters this time for the students in the audience.
We first made the word "hug". As you can see, one of my students realized that the letters were not standing in the right order, so she is telling them where each one should stand to make the word correctly. Each of the students then uses their set of Rainbow Magnetic Letters to also make the word "hug". We then worked to change the word "hug" to "bug" and eventually worked our way to making "big" and "bog".
The words that we made in this lesson were:
hug, bug, big, bog, log, leg, lag, wag, wig, wit, sit, sat, sad, and mad
Each and every time I add in one of these making words lessons my students are engaged in the process of making words and are more likely to take what they learned and use it in their own reading and writing.
