Transitional readers, generally third grade to fifth graders, need to hone their skills, developing larger and larger banks of sight words and more reliable means of decoding and constructing words. Formal word study is a great help to children who are encountering more and more multi-syllabic words.
Daily Word Building Activities with 1×3 cards
Daily word building activities are advisable for children in this stage. The order of the presentation of word building activities would be to first present base words plus other base words to form compound words (such as “snowball ” or “hangman”). Next, present base words plus prefixes (such as “undone” and “degrease”), The third step would be to present base words plus inflected suffixes which do not change spelling (such as “careful” or “goodness”), then base words plus inflected suffixes which do change spelling ( like “hitting” and “beautiful”). Lastly, the teacher would present common phonic syllable patterns such as vowel-consonant/ consonant-vowel (vc/cv) as is found in the word “basket”.
Combs writes that children should be given daily opportunities to work with word building, decoding (“hunting”) and sorting using small 1 X 3 inch cards with base words, prefixes, suffixes, and letters necessary for spelling changes. Practice building words leads to more sight words and faster decoding, increasing children’s confidence.
Word Building Games for Small Groups
Word study need not be a solitary practice. Children could work either independently or in small groups to scour handouts for compound words, prefixes or suffixes and phonic syllable patterns. For double the educational value, the handout or article can be on a topic that applies to a unit the class is studying, such as volcanoes or dinosaurs.
Students armed with pencils and graph paper could take lists of compound words with particular vowel/consonant patterns, words with prefixes or words with suffixes and be encouraged to create their own word searches. A partner could then look for the hidden words.
Spelling Practice for Phonic Syllable Patterns
To assist children in identifying spelling patterns, each child can be given two crayons or pencils of different colors. The children are then presented with words containing the pattern being studied. The child then writes the consonants in one color, and vowels in another. In this exercise, the child uses both vision and kinesthetic movement to master the spelling pattern.
Another kinesthetic activity would be to have some children in a group represent certain vowels and other children represent particular consonants. The children, who would be holding a paper with “their” letter on it, then re-arrange themselves physically to present a chosen word.
Word study is a necessary part of growing literacy for the third to fifth grade student. But it can be done in the context of a unit of study, involve games and partners, and truly be fun!
References:
Combs, M. Readers and writers in primary grades: A balanced and integrated approach. (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, 2002.
Cunningham, P. & Allington, R. Classrooms that work. (2nd ed.). New York: Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers. 1999.
A version of the article was pubished July 17, 2010 on Suite 101.com (link.)