A TRC Original, Words They Need To Know: A Book of K-3 Sight Word Activities by Sheron Brown and Sally Oppy, is intended for use by primary teachers, reading specialists, and classroom volunteers. This professional resource is easy to use, addressing the management of sight word activities and materials, as well as how to fit sight word activities into a busy instructional day.
The Contents also contains the basic philosophy of why we teach sight words in the classroom: Recognition leads to greater fluency, speed and comprehension in early readers. Using this resource in your classroom will enable your K-3 students to learn the first 300 essential sight words of the American Heritage List of 1,000 most frequently used words in written English.
When it comes to building students' knowledge and skills, assessment is a necessary requirement. Words They Need To Know: A Book of K-3 Sight Word Activities begins with a breakdown by grade level of sight word lists for ongoing assessment as students progress, including suggestions about how to give the sight word assessments. These instructions are clear and easy to follow, appropriate for the teacher, classroom aides or parent volunteers.
After assessment comes practice, and this resource contains a large variety of activities for use in literacy centers, at students' desks or one-on-one with an adult. These activities are broken down into Word Card, Magnetic Letter and Writing Activities. Along with the Literacy Learning Center cards with instructions, there are ready-to-duplicate flashcards, assessment tools, record keeping pages, and gameboards.
The activities in Words They Need To Know: A Book of K-3 Sight Word Activities will help students practice the 300 essential sightwords individually, in partners, or in small group settings, providing fun ways for students to become better readers!
I spent some of my professional development time over the last couple of years studying how best to reach our ELL students. In our area, we have Hispanic and Russian/Ukranian populations. I don’t speak Spanish or Russian – I took German in high school against everyone’s recommendation, but I haven’t run into any students who speak it. So when I think of teaching ELL kids, I feel anxious. Insecure. Stressed.
I’ll never forget how our trainer opened the session on the first day.
“When you think about it,” she said, “we’re all English Language Learners.”
I felt my shoulders relax. Of course!
Personal Readers for Emergent and Beginning Readers , authored by Donald Bear, Carol Caserta-Henry, and Darl Venner, takes a similar stance. Personal Readers are for all readers in our classrooms, and can be incorporated into whatever reading and spelling curriculum you currently use. Students reread collections of familiar materials in their Personal Readers until they feel comfortable reading them independently. Other expected outcomes from using Personal Readers include:
- Build Vocabulary and Word Study
- Improve Fluency and Expression
- Increase Comprehension Skills
The first twenty pages of Personal Readers for Emergent and Beginning Readers lays out the fundamentals of using these techniques in your classroom, including a brief overview of how and why to use this book. Then there is a section detailing what the authors refer to as, “Key Practices” for using Personal Readers; these include Group Experience Charts, Language Experiences, Rhymes and Readers Theatre.
There are nine units in Personal Readers for Emergent and Beginning Readers, each unit taking from 3 to 7 days depending upon the extension activities you choose to do with your students. There are comprehensive suggestions, including a possible schedule, word study and collection, and word activities. Organization of Personal Readers is also discussed, including a breakdown of what needs to be photocopied and put into students’ folders.
Directions for each activity are divided according to development – the Emergent reader, the Beginning reader and the Late Beginning reader – and are easy to distinguish and follow. The elements of Personal Readers for Emergent and Beginning Readers fit easily into a standard sized folder. Much of the preparation could be done by a parent volunteer or an assistant.
Most important, however, the activities look fun! Some of the Personal Readers units include exploring bubbles, magnets and worms, giving your students exciting ways to learn together!
![tangram-alphabet[1]](../../../s/files/1/0255/7841/t/1/assets/blog_tangram-alphabet1-150x150_1427.jpg "tangram-alphabet[1]")
Tangram Alphabet: Building Letters With Tangrams is a deceptively simple conceptual resource for teachers. It's a quick read, and all the more valuable for the possibilities it offers students across the curriculum.
If you've not used tangrams in your classroom before, they are pieces taken from a square; the pieces are called tans. The pieces fit together to make larger shapes that resemble what they represent. The beginning of this teaching resource explains what they are and how to use them, as well as tips to get startedand basic lessons. Included also are suggested reading and language arts lessons to further expand your students' experience or to work with older kids.
As students are exploring using tangrams, this resource offers a natural transition. The pages are two-sided sheets, each one with a letter from the alphabet. One side has a letter with the tangram shape outlines and the other side has the same letter, but without outlines. There are also several sheets of Tangram squares to photocopy as needed.
Advantages to utilizing this book include:
- Exploring geometric concepts, problem solving and spatial skills
- Practice fine motor skills
- Letter recognition and sound recognition opportunities
- For use with small groups and centers
Tangram Alphabet: Building Letters With Tangrams is a great resource for combining math and literacy through the use of math manipulatives and letter recognition activities. It's a great resource for any teacher's library!
1. Photocopy tangram squares onto heavy paper, laminate and cut. Keep the pieces of each tangram square together, placing them in envelopes or sandwich bags that seal (this would be great for parent volunteers!). There should be one square per bag or envelope.
2. On the back of each tangram piece, place a small piece of a magnet cut from a larger roll (these usually have adhesive on the back and are found in office supply or craft stores). Put the pieces of each square back into its bag or envelope, keeping them together.
3. Photocopy each tangram letter onto a transperancy.
4. Tape the transperancy to a write-on, wipe-off lap board.
5. During center time, students can use the magnetic tangram pieces with the transparent letters taped to the boards, moving pieces around until they find the correct configuration. This would be a good way to help introduce tangrams as well as reinforce skills without the outlines of the shapes within the letters. And, use them over and over again!
It's been a long short summer. Let's ease into this and do some long and short vowel review. Sit back and relax. Get ready to hit "print" on your browser, because you'll like having these ideas in your "vowels" file. Listed below, you'll find some ideas to get you started with short and long vowel lessons.
There are 26 letters in the English alphabet. Vowel sounds are made from 5 of these letters, which are used to make 19 vowel sounds. The other 21 letters are used to make the 25 consonant sounds.
The 19 vowel phonemes consist of:
- 5 Long Vowels (/ā/, /ē/, /ī/, /ō/, /ū/)
- 5 Short Vowels (/ă/, /ĕ/, /ĭ/, /ŏ/, /ŭ/)
and sometimes the letters w and y
- 3 Dipthongs
- A long and short oo (2 sounds)
- 4 'r' controlled vowel sounds
What a confusing bit of information to share with students! Alright, let's take a deep breath here. As you well know, we teachers have a knack for taking something complicated and making is quite simple and fun! Here are a few fun suggestions for teaching the 19 vowel phonemes (if you have ideas of your own, please share them in the comments section below):
1. Wheel of Fortune Vowel Game
Teachers, this one is for you.
B_t t_ _ch_rs h_v_ s_mm_rs _ff.
I'd like to buy a vowel.
Create your own sentences on the white board and leave out the vowels.
2. Long Vowel & Short Vowel Songs
Look at your vowel charts and create songs while singing the words you are studying in any melody you wish.
E.g. "Let's make the sound of /ŭ/ in summer. /ŭ/, /ŭ/, /ŭ/."
Visual learners will benefit from a chart showing the word and the vowel sound. Pointing to the chart as the students sing the song will reinforce learning. You may choose a kinesthetic learner to point at the chart as the class sings aloud.
3. Long Vowel & Short Vowel Picture Sorts by Sounds
It is helpful to encourage the students to say the words aloud and emphasis the vowel sounds. Our picture sorts help develop students’ phonological and phonetic awareness as they contrast and compare various sounds with letters and with rhyme and alliteration.
Short Vowel Sound Sort Cards
Long Vowel Sound Sort Cards
4. Kathy the Cat Short Vowel Puppet Show
Use this free Kathy the Cat puppet template with the vowel sound you are studying, (e.g. cat, for the short vowel sound a.)
Say, "Kathy the Cat has things with the short vowel sound /ă/ in her basket."
Kathy the Cat takes out each thing from her basket. She identifies each object by name aloud and repeats the vowel sound.
"Kathy the Cat has an apple, /ă/, in her basket."
Here are some ideas of what to put in Kathy the Cat's basket (basket also has the short vowel a sound):
-and/or-
You can have Kathy the Cat point to your short vowel /ă/sounds chart.
Students can create their own puppets, after they see your Kathy the Cat empty her basket. When students play with their own Kathy the Cat they will remember the /ă/ sound. You can also use the Kathy the Cat as a center activity.
5. Vowel Sound Educational Software
You may have some educational software already installed onto the computers at school which teach long and short vowel sounds. It's great to find educational software that reinforces classroom instruction using visual, auditory and kinesthetic instruction.
Here's a link to a free online short vowel sound game.
This free online game uses visual and kinesthetic/sensory-motor modes of instruction. Encourage your students to say the pictures aloud as a way include auditory learners as they choose the correct vowel. You may choose to share this link with your students during computer lab or post it on your classroom website.
6. Create Long Vowel & Short Vowel Puzzles
If you would like to put your own list of words into a puzzle (e.g. from a spelling list). You can visit and create your own puzzle at Discovery Education.
7. Long and Short Vowel Games
Here are a couple of games to choose from:
7. Long Vowel & Short Vowel Poem of the Week & Mini Books
Put the Poem of the Week in a pocket chart. Read aloud and point to the vowels of study.
Student can also create their own Poem of the Week Mini Books and use highlighter tape or a highlighter to show vowel sounds of study.
Here's another Wheel of Fortune Game for You:
Throughout this year, just remember...
"Th_ b_st t_ _ch_rs t_ _ch fr_m th_ h_ _rt, n_t fr_m th_ b_ _k."
~Author Unknown
Here's another quote worth solving.
"If y_u pr_m_se n_t t_ bel_eve everyth_ng your ch_ld says happens at sch_ _l, _'ll pr_m_se n_t t_ bel_eve everyth_ng he says happens at h_me."
~Anonymous Teacher
Share Long Vowel & Short Vowel Lesson Plans
Please feel free to post any lesson plan ideas for teaching long vowel and short vowels sounds in the comments below.
As a teacher, getting your students excited about grammar is likely to be one of the bigger challenges you will face.
This is, in part, because it has developed an awful (if not undeserved) reputation over the years for being tedious and boring.
But despite our preconceived notions on the subject, we all know that grammar is essential to students' success on standardized tests and college entrance exams.
Fortunately, teaching and learning grammar no longer needs to be the excruciating experience it has been in decades past. In fact, newer research shows that the more creative and varied we get with our methods of teaching grammar, the more likely our students are to have an active understanding of what grammar is, and be able to use the rules they know in context.
Read on to discover several ideas for English grammar exercises that will keep your students engaged without boring them to tears!
Make Kids Laugh with Grammar
One of the best ways to bring a little humor into the classroom is through the art of storytelling. This method has the advantage of not only giving your lesson a fun, light-hearted feel, but also providing students information through a medium with which they already have many positive associations.
Try inventing a character (or have your students invent one) and use that character's actions to demonstrate verb tenses, plural nouns, etc. The more off the wall your character seems, the more likely it is to stick in a student's memory.
Or, use a puppet (or a set of puppets) to "act out" various grammar concepts. This can be especially useful for learning verb tenses and prepositions.
There are also many book series out there that are designed to teach grammar but that read like traditional picture books. The Grammar Tales Box Set, for example, includes 10 full-color read-aloud stories which teach parts of speech, punctuation, nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, capitalization, sentence structure, and proofreading, all via engaging, funny stories. Another is the Words are CATegorical series.
Turn Grammar into a Game
By incorporating games into your lesson plan, your students will not only stop dreading grammar lessons, but they'll actually look forward to them.
Board games, such as Go to Press! A Grammar Game, are sure to be a big hit with young students, and will have them giggling too. In this unique game, students try to create a complete newspaper by moving from department to department (such as entertainment, sports, weather, etc.) finding and correcting errors in the headlines. The goal is to be the first player to return to the boss's office and say, "Go to press!"
If you don't have access to board games, there are still a number of activities you can have students participate in. Create a crossword puzzle and use the clues to get students to practice critical thinking skills about the grammar lesson of your choice. Or, try playing a game of hangman to get students focused on adjectives.
Make Grammar Something to Sing About
Children love to sing, and singing can certainly be used to teach English grammar. One way to do this is to sing out the words to common songs or rhymes they already know, and have students point out certain focal points.
Take the following, for example:
“I've been working on the railroad, all the live long day
I've been working on the railroad, just to pass the time away
Can't you hear the whistle blowing, rise up so early in the morning
Can't you hear the captain shouting, Dinah blow your horn"
What verb tenses are used in this song? Where are the nouns? Are the nouns singular or plural? What about prepositions or apostrophe use?
Getting Physical with Grammar
Children learn best by doing. Show your students the correlation between grammar and the activities they do everyday. Taking them out to the playground and having them jump rope, run, or play ball to demonstrate the importance of verbs (or nouns, adjectives, or prepositions) is much more likely to get your point across than discussing these same concepts while your children listen quietly from their desks.
Another major advantage of getting your students engaged in physical activity is that it breaks up the monotony of classroom learning, and helps reinvigorate them; especially important if you notice they are getting restless or bored.
Use the Board
Even during more traditional lesson plans, there are still ways to allow for student participation and make learning grammar fun. Many people, for instance, have had great results with using diagrams, on a whiteboard or chalkboard.
In her article "A Creative Way to Teach English," Janet Kay Blaylock suggests you begin by drawing a large circle in the middle of the board. Then draw several lines in different directions from the center circle leading to smaller circles. From there, the diagram can be used to demonstrate numerous grammar concepts.
You might put a common prefix or suffix in the center circle, for instance, and then ask students to think of words that go with that prefix or suffix to create new words. You can also try this with compound words, common nouns, pronouns, etc.
Also, try using word magnets or other sentence building materials, such as those found in Story Maker magnetic Poetry Kit. This particular set includes 200 color-coded word magnets with different colors for verbs, adjectives, and nouns. Have the children create their own sentences and then explain what they've done.
Take Grammar Learning Online
Today, there are many high quality learning-based websites designed to making the teaching and learning of English grammar easier. Just go to a search engine and type in the key words "English grammar exercises" or "English grammar" and you are bound to find several.
Sites such as this ESL site on AOL randomly generate sentences that focus on specific areas such as verb tenses, subjects, verbs, objects, punctuation, etc. This is also a good resource for teachers, as they can use the grammar rules portion of the site to review their own knowledge before a particular lesson.
While teaching grammar most certainly has its challenges, making your lessons fun need not be one of them. With a little creative thinking, grammar can truly become something to sing about!
~by Stefanie Boucher
[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="250" caption="Use Poem of the Week to create a fun and exciting poetry learning center in your classroom!"][/caption]
Recently one of our Subscribers asked about setting up a Poem of the Week writing center for her 4th and 5th graders.
Poetry is an important learning center in any K-8 classroom and a Poem of the Week center is an easy and fun way to get kids excited about rhyme, meter and lyrical prose.
Our reader asked where to find good poems and poetry activities for her Poem of the Week writing center. She also asked about poetry reading exercises to help get her kids modeling good examples and understanding the elements of poetry.
So, we’ve put together a few thoughts and ideas for you to consider as you design your own classroom poetry learning centers.
The Importance of Poetry in Early Literacy
Poetry learning centers are essential to developing better reading and writing skills for kids of all ages and grade levels.
Reading poetry comes naturally for kids since rhymes help with memorization and sound recognition. But having kids create their own poems improves handwriting, word use and sentence structure and empowers them to think and write creatively.
One tool many teachers find invaluable for teaching poetry to emerging readers and spellers is the ‘fill in the blanks’ approach, which makes it easy for kids to create their own poems while learning the structure and elements involved in various types of poetry formats.
Teaching Poetry to Kids
It is important to make poetry fun, which is why a Poem of the Week center is such a great format. By making it something to look forward to each week you can begin to instill a love of poetry in your students. Put a little humor into it; you can find lots of fun poetry activities over at Giggle Poetry.
The other part of teaching kids poetry involves the formats and parameters of creating poems. Once kids are ready to move beyond filling in the blanks, you want to try activities that help them grasp what attributes make each type of poetry unique and how to recognize what type of poem they are reading or writing.
Poetry Reading Centers and Activities
Below we present a number of activities and learning centers you can use in your classroom to make learning poetry fun and creative for your K-6 students. These ideas are excerpted from our Poem of the Week Book Series by author Betsy Franco:
Choosing Poems
You’re free to use the poems in any order that suits you. Even if you’re on a year-round schedule, you’re set. To help you appreciate the versatility of the collection, the poems have been organized in two ways:
- In the table of contents, the seasonal poems come first. Following the seasonal poems is a set of poems appropriate for any time of year.
- In the chart on page 3, the poems have been organized by phonemes, and those phonemes are spelled out in the chart. All the poems in the collection are included, and seasonal poems in the list are starred for easy identification.
Teacher Notes
Use Poem of the Week to share the rhythm and cadence of poetry and the joy of poetic language with the children in your class. The topics of the poems were chosen to reflect a child’s world, making this book a natural, weekly link to the family. And if you choose, you can use each poem as the context for raising phonemic awareness and inspiring creativity.
Versatility Plus
You can choose poems by:
- Theme
- Season
- Week
- Phonemic focus
- Your particular interests
What You’ve Got
- A poem for every week of the year
- A set of thematic poems for each season
- Suggestions on how to bring out the specific phonemic focus of each poem
- Suggestions for making the poems personal and interactive for the children
- Poetry strips and an illustration that fit into the Desktop Pocket Chart
Useful Accessories
The following accessories can be useful when extending the poems:
- Desktop Pocket Chart - Poem of the Week includes strips for each poem that fit into the 12” x 16” Desktop Pocket Chart. You can use the poems for intimate group work with the help of this miniature pocket chart.
- Word Building Kit - This kit includes letter holders and laminated letters to help children stay organized as they build words and work with onsets and rimes.
- Magic Wand - A Magic Wand can be truly magical when pointing out onsets and rimes and other phonemic elements in the poems. If you don’t have the official Magic Wand, use the pattern on page 10 to create one. Or you can use our colored Hand Pointers as a magic wand substitute.
- Wikki Stix - Made of waxed yarn, Wikki Stix temporarily stick to almost any surface, including the student poem and the Desktop Pocket Chart. They are perfect for underlining or circling the phonemic elements or the rhyming words in the poems.
- Highlighter Tape - This removable, colorful, transparent tape can be used to highlight words, phonemic elements, or phrases on the Desktop Pocket Chart.
- Sticky Notes - Sticky notes are useful for making poems interactive by covering and replacing words on the Desktop Pocket Chart.
- Standard Pocket Chart and Sentence Strips - If you choose to, you can write the poems on standard pocket chart strips for whole class or group instruction.
How the Book is Organized
Student Poems
For every week of the year, you have a poem, enlarged for easy reading. You can make a copy of the poem for each child, leaving off the Suggestions for Going Further.
Example Poem of the Week:
Apples in Autumn
It’s hard to eat apples
without my front teeth,
But apples in autumn
are really a treat.
The apples are squooshy
down under my feet,
But those from the tree
are still crunchy and sweet!
Suggestions for Going Further
The suggestions next to the poems are your easy-to-use guides for extending the poems, if the ideas suit your needs. The suggestions point out the hidden phonemic treasures in the poems and how to make use of them. The suggestions also include ideas for extending the poems and making them interactive and personal for the children.
Included among the student poems are twenty-two seasonal poems which are perfect for monthly calendar work. The poems capture the essence of each season.
Example Suggestions for Going Further:
- Make word cards from the long e words in the poem that contain the vowel pattern ea or ee. Encourage children to sort the words in different ways; for example, they could sort by vowel pattern, by location of the vowel pattern in the word, or by the number of letters in the word.
- Let children use the following frame to change the fruit and/or the season. For example, they could use peaches or cherries in summer.
It’s hard to eat ____
without my front teeth.
But ____ in ____
are really a treat.
- Talk about what happens to apples that fall to the ground. On the Desktop Pocket Chart, put a sticky note over the word squooshy in line 5, and write in other possible adjectives that the children think of to replace it.
Strips for the Desktop Pocket Chart
You’re all set for group work. By copying and cutting out the enlarged strips (starting on page 56) on index tag and using them in the Desktop Pocket Chart, you can display a poem for many eyes to see. Groups of children can interact with the poem using this intimate, yet practical medium.
How to Use the Elements of the Book
There are many ways to use Poem of the Week. You can copy the student poems for individual use. You can reconstruct the poem on a Desktop Pocket Chart for group work. You can make your own strips for a Standard Pocket Chart.
Ways to Use the Student Poems
- Read through and select the poem that suits your needs.
- Fill in any blanks or add blanks to the poem, if you choose.
- Make a copy of the poem without the Suggestions. Or cut out the poem and adhere it to the center of another paper before copying.
- Enjoy the poem for the beauty of the words, the rhythm, and the content.
- Have each child add the poem to a personal poetry anthology.
- Follow the Suggestions for Going Further that make sense to you.
- Send poem books home to be shared with family members.
Going Further with the Student Poems
- Make the poems interactive. Give children a chance to personalize the poem by creating a blank for them to fill with their own words. It’s as simple as whiting out or taping over a word or phrase in the student poems before making copies.
- Let children answer questions posed in the poems. Here is an example of an Interview Form to go with You are Special on page 15.
- Let children illustrate the poem or make an appropriate border for it.
- Have children highlight or underline the particular phoneme featured in the poem.
- White out or tape over onsets or rimes in the poem, and let children fill them in.
- Add new verses or write variations on the poem using poetry frames.
- Make the poems into word problems.
- Make lists of rhyming words from the poem. Or make webs of words that share a phonemic element or rime that is emphasized in the poem.
Ways to Use the Desktop Pocket Chart
- Copy the poetry strips and the illustration onto index tag.
- Cut out the strips and the illustration.
- Reconstruct the poem in the Desktop Pocket Chart using the poetry strips.
- We’ve numbered each line to minimize confusion. You can keep the numbers or cut them off. If a poem has 10 lines, the title has been designed to fit behind the first line in the top pocket.
- Gather a group of children to recite the poem together and enjoy its rhythm.
- Work with the poem’s phonemic focus in a relevant context.
Going Further with the Desktop Pocket Chart
- Use non-permanent markers, Wikki Stix, or highlighting tape to highlight phonemes on the pocket chart strips.
- Let children use a pointer such as a Magic Wand to identify particular phonemes or rhyming words.
- Use sticky notes to cover words in the poem. Let children suggest new words to write in their place to personalize or change the poem. Alternatively, you can use blank word cards made from heavy paper to cover and replace words. (Cards should be about 2” long, 1” high.)
- Cover phrases in the poem with blank strips and let children interact with the poem by rewriting the phrases. (Strips should be about 1” high.)
- Have children use letters to build banks of words that share the same phoneme as the one featured in the poem.
- Use chart paper to create banks or webs of words with the same phonemic element as the poem.
- Make word cards focusing on a phoneme from the poem, and let children sort the cards in different ways.
Order Your Copy of Poem of the Week
To see all of these ideas and many more, order your own copies of Betsy Franco’s Poem of the Week!
Perhaps no other classroom activity is more effective in teaching emerging literacy students than using word sorts to emphasize students’ grasp of the meaning and relationships of words.
An alternative to more traditional phonics and whole-word exercises, word sorts use cards with printed words on them, which students ‘sort’ into groups.
A simple, meaningful activity for small groups or students working individually, word sorts teach students to identify the meaning and attributes of words by sorting them into collections of words with similar meanings, helping build vocabulary skills. A number of variations are possible with word sort activities.
Open and Closed Word Sorts
The two types of word sorts are open-ended and closed-ended, the difference being that the property in common between words is stated up front in closed word sorts, whereas in open word sorts, students must determine the relationships between words while completing the sorting activity.
Closed Word Sorts - Students are provided the categories and specific attributes of each and then try to match words to the correct categories.
Open Word Sorts - Students must discern the common attributes while sorting words, describing the categories into which they sort words and the features they have in common.
Conducting Word Sort Activities in the Classroom
Used as a strategy to introduce and reinforce vocabulary, word sorts help students learn to recognize common relationships between words, increase reading comprehension and retention, teach them to think critically about terms and concepts, and develop their ability to make deep, meaningful connections between words and concepts.
Word sort activities help teach conceptual thinking beyond reading literacy, helping develop students’ critical thinking and reasoning abilities and understanding of content in math, science, social studies and other subjects.
Basic Classroom Word Sort Activities
- Pick words that encourage a greater understanding of the core objective in your lesson plan; key ideas, people, places, events, etc.
- Write these concepts or vocabulary on index cards.
- Working either together in small groups or individually, have your students sort words into specific themes, categories or topics.
How to Judge the Success of Word Sort Activities
- Students should demonstrate they understand the specific characteristics of the words they are sorting and their conceptual relationships.
- Students should demonstrate ability to recognize the common relationships between words and a holistic understanding of their content.
Things to Consider When Conducting Word Sort Activities
- It is critical for teachers to model the activity so that students achieve greater success through the word sort activity.
- Closed word sorts help provide a ‘framework’ for students when engaging in word sort activities.
- Variations and enhancements to basic word sort activities can include:
- Let students manipulate the words into other categories. For example, apples and pears are both ‘types of fruit’ and ‘things that grow on trees’.
- Ask your students to explain the reasoning for their word classifications; often this can give you clues where students need additional help and support in conceptualizing the relationships between words.
- Using ‘pre-identified sentence structures’, have your students form sentences using the words they have sorted to demonstrate they understand the correct usage of the words.
Creating a Simple Classroom Word Sort Activity
- On a white board or index cards, list 10 to 20 vocabulary words from a specific reading selection.
- You can either provide the categories to be used (closed word sort) or let them choose their own (more advanced, open word sort activity).
- Break the class into small groups of 4 to 5 students each and have them work together on the word sort activity, giving them 10 to 15 minutes to categorize the words.
- Conclude the activity by having each group present to the entire class their word list for one category. This enables each group to present the reasoning behind their categorization and enables you to summarize the concepts and relationships of each category.
Additional Word Sort References and Books
All Sorts of Sorts: Word Sorts That Reinforce Spelling and Phonetic Patterns
Author: Sheron Brown
Paperback: 190 pages
Publisher: Teaching Resource Center
Publication Date: August 08, 2008
Description:
The 155 Sorts in this book provide word study practice for students in large group, small group, individual, and learning center settings. They offer a multi-sensory experience in which students manipulate and categorize words by specific features or sound parts: initial and final consonants, short and long vowel patterns, high frequency phonograms, vowel digraphs and diphthongs, common blends and endings, and "sound-alikes" such as gn and kn. There are also some fun word meaning sorts such as "has wheels" and "does not have wheels." Instructions are provided for presenting open, closed, speed, "blind," and writing sorts. Blank word sort masters are also included so you and your students can design your own sorting activities.
All Sorts of Sorts 2: Word Sorts for Complex Spelling and Phonetic Pattern Reinforcement
Author: Sheron Brown
Paperback: 222 pages
Publisher: Teaching Resource Center
Publication Date: August 17, 2008
Description:
Using the sorts in this book, your students will acquire word pattern knowledge, learn spelling rules, and formulate generalizations through compare-and-contrast activities. They'll learn to sort groups of words according to spelling rules, meanings, endings, sound patterns, prefixes, suffixes, spelling generalizations, syllables, and other shared properties.
All Sorts of Sorts 3: Word Sorts for Vocabulary Development in the Content Area
Author: Sheron Brown
Publisher: Teaching Resource Center
Publication Date: 2008
Description:
Word Sorts for Vocabulary Development in the Content Area; the most comprehensive books on word sorting available. Provides a wide range of sorts offered at all developmental levels. Great for on-grade level, remedial, ESL, Title I, and Reading First!
Words Their Way: Letter and Picture Sorts for Emergent Spellers
Author: Donald R. Bear
Paperback: 160 pages
Publisher: Prentice Hall
Publication Date: January 28, 2005
Description:
This book provides teachers with concept sorting ideas followed by picture sorts for developing phonemic awareness, alphabet knowledge, letter recognition and concept of words in print. This companion volume augments that content with numerous reproducible sorts that specifically address the needs of the syllables and affixes speller. Accompanying the sorts are step-by-step directions for guiding pupils through the sorting lessons, as well as follow-up activities and tips for using the sorts to their best advantage. Designed for elementary educators' use as part of a reading curriculum where emergent spelling is covered.
Words Their Way: Word Sorts for Syllables and Affixes Spellers
Author: Francine Johnston
Paperback: 144 pages
Publisher: Prentice Hall
Publication Date: May 21, 2004
Description:
This book, intended for use with the core Words Their Way book, is the ideal supplement to any phonics, spelling and word study curriculum. The Words Their Way: Word Study for Phonics, Spelling, and Vocabulary Instruction core book provides a practical, research-based and classroom-proven way to study words with pupils; this companion volume augments that content with numerous reproducible sorts that specifically address the needs of the syllables and affixes speller. Accompanying the sorts are step-by-step directions for guiding pupils through the sorting lessons, as well as follow-up activities and tips for using the sorts to their best advantage. This book is designed to help all teachers address the needs of all readers and spellers, giving them confidence in the knowledge that their teaching is developmentally appropriate.
Author Shari Nielson-Dunn discusses the importance of picture sorts in helping early and transitional readers recognize short and long vowel patterns, spelling patterns and word sounds and patterns. Includes the introduction to Dr. Nielson-Dunn's book "Picture This Too!".
Integrating literacy centers in today's primary grade classroom requires planning and forethought. In this informative article, primary grade educators will find new ideas and tools on implementing literacy centers in the K-5 classroom.
Educators know the importance of early childhood literacy development. In this article, teachers will gain new insights and ideas on introducing literacy centers in the Pre-K and kindergarten classroom.
