Note: I wrote this song to go with the munching monsters made with
the plastic trash cans with the swinging lids. I found the idea on
Teachers.net and absolutely love it. You can store your word/picture
cards in it. If you'd like directions and/or pictures, go to Marcia
Goudie's Muncher Gallery at
http://www.marcias-lesson-links.com/Muncher%20Monsters.html
Count the Syllables
The purpose of this activity is to promote the development of
early phonemic awareness skills. The categories of the activities will also
serve as a tool for developing and practicing vocabulary for second language
learners.
(Tune: "Down by the Station")
Down in the first
grade,
Early in the morning,
See the ready readers
All in a row.
When we come to new words,
We know how to read them.
Chunk! Chunk! Sound them out!
Off we go!
(Tune: "Oh, Where Has My Little Dog Gone?")
Oh, what do you do when
you come to a word?
A word that is new to you?
Do you cry and pout, stomp your feet and shout?
Oh, what, oh, what do you do?
Well, we don't give up on those really hard words.
We know all the things we can do.
We work really hard 'til we figure them out.
'Cause that's what good readers do!
Perseverance!
Sunny
Singer
(Tune: You Are
My Sunshine)
My name is Sunny, Sunny Singer.
I’d like to sing some songs with you.
We’ll sing of letters and their silly sounds
And we’ll see what letters can do!
There’s l – i - c – k, and k – i – c – k.
Tell me what those letters say.
There’s p – i - c – k, and s – i - c – k.
That is spelling the –ick family way.
There’s n – i - c – k, and t – i - c – k.
What is c - h – i - c – k?
And how about q – u – i – c – k
When we’re spelling the –ick family way?
Cherry Carl, 2004
Note:
Sunny Girl is a puppet that I bought last year in New York and she
just looked like the type to sing word building songs. She sat in my
sister's kitchen until I was forced to write the song! LOL! Sunny is
the redhead on the right. I'm a redhead, so it was perfect for me!
The company has multicultural glove puppets, community helpers, and
much more. I also bought a clown girl with pockets to use for
introducing sounds. The manufacturer is located in Florida, but the
website below provides a list of retailers. You can, however, see a
large assortment of pictures of the puppets available.
For two letter rimes, just change the spellings and the lines to the
song:
The following activities have been used to
reinforce decoding and encoding through analogy, onset and rime, and rhyme.
"Is there another word that I know that has this chunk? If I take this
letter and put these letters with it, what word do I have now?"
c a t - c + m = m a t
Each word family have at least 20 - 30
different activities to allow for differentiated instruction.
Please note that those that are complete and
ready to use are underlined. Most of the
Stationery, Word Building Mats and Recording Sheets are ready and so are the
Shape Books, Word Lists, Cloze the Gap, Alphabet Alley and Configuration
Stations. When I have time, I'll finish the Word Slides, Puzzles, etc. We
can dream, huh? If you've been with me since the beginning of this website,
you'll notice that what started out as one worksheet is now many. I still
get requests for additional word families and I work on them as soon as I
get them. I know that your requests are for your students and so I try to
get them to you in a timely fashion. Don't be afraid to ask because I have
templates and clipart collections for each word family. I'm still open for
suggestions for other types of activities to add to this section.
The graphics are from PrintMaster, which has a great
collection of kid friendly pictures, and from Microsoft ClipArt (online).
Teacher Tips!
The following ideas and/or
comments about using the word family activities come from teachers
through my e-mail:
carl1404@msn.com. If you have
found success in a special way, and would like to share your idea,
please let me know and I'll post it here. Be sure to include your
grade level and location. For instance, some teachers of second
language learners have found it to be very useful and so have
resource specialists.
A
special thanks goes to Vickie Schultz. She creates a power point
presentation every week with the words and pictures that sounds
incredible. Her students can access it themselves to study their
weekly spelling words. She's sent a sample for the -op family and
the -in families and I've posted it below. I'm going to call
these presentations Power Practice and create some additional
ones. Vickie also suggested an idea file so that teachers can
share activities that they use with the word families, for
instance, writing -op words on paper popcorn, making popcorn, etc.
Anyone interested in an idea sharing file for each word family. If
you have an idea that you'd like to share, I'll post it with the
applicable word family and give you credit, of course!
Chasity and Karen in Santee, California send a spelling homework
letter to the parents of their first graders. It includes a link
to this page so that students can select from the word family
activities for that week. Parents can assist in the selection, but
those first graders are doing well at self-selecting items that
are appropriate for their skill level.
A special thanks to Fred
Duffelmeyer of Iowa State University. He discovered this site and has since
offered many valuable suggestions for improvement! Thank you, Fred! As a result
of his input I reformatted the stationery activities so that
they're more appropriate for second graders. There's more room to
write and less graphic. He also proofread every single cloze
activity! Typos do happen and I'm grateful to anyone who
lets me know when that occurs so that I can fix any errors.
Geri
Rightmyer, a kindergarten teacher, had a wonderful idea for using
the alphabet book with stickers from the Alphabet Avenue page. She
says: "I took the
alphabet book and the alphabet stickers and made a book using the
pictures and velcro so the children could use it over. I mounted
everything on heavy paper with the letters forming the basis of
the book. I then took the stickers and mounted them on heavy
paper and cut them out. Today some of the kids were putting
the pictures into the book just to be helpful. It was very
interesting to see how they talked their way through the names of
the pictures and decided which letter it belonged to. They choose
to do it at playtime and seemed to really enjoy themselves.
My class is an inclusion
class and I have two autistic children in my room. Learning the
sounds is very difficult for them so I am excited about some of
your other ideas and how I can adapt them for repeat usage." She's
going to send a photograph of the completed book so that others
can use her idea. Thanks, Geri!
