October 7th Blog Post

Making words is a fun way to help young students with decoding, spelling phonetically, and

phonemic awareness. It has been found that there is a relationship between spelling ability and the ability to identify words in a reading, which is why "Making Words" is such a helpful method of teaching. Not only is this a simple activity, but it is also rather short and it is recommended that it be done for no longer than fifteen minutes. Children will make between 12 and 15 words and will begin with two words until they gradually advance to larger words. An example is the word spider. By using a "pocket chart" with the letters: e, p, i, s, d, r are presented to each child. The teacher may start out with the word "Ed" then go to "Red". Many students would then change the uppercase E to lowercase and the teacher can ask them why they did that.

Making words is something that I wish my teachers would have focused on more when I was in elementary school. Yes, my teachers spent time teaching us spelling words and things of that sort; but we never spent much time with "pocket charts" in the class. I think that it would have been so beneficial to me, and I think it will definitely benefit the students in my future classroom.

Did your teachers focus a lot on word making when you were younger?
Do you think you will use making words in your classroom?

I stumbled upon this blog while browsing Pinterest over the weekend. It is written by a first grade teacher, DeAnne and she posts some great things about teaching her class and dealing with certain aspects of the classroom as well as the curriculum. She also posts tons of free class handouts! I highly encourage you to go take a look!
http://firstgradeandfabulous.blogspot.com/2013/07/patience-faith-trust.html