Making Words Model Lesson

Do you play "making words" during word work in your primary classroom? It's one of my favorite ways to practice spelling and decoding skills with kinders and firsties! But what I DON'T love about making words are all of the letter cards to pass out and keep up with. It always took me more time to pass out cards than to do the actual lesson! So when we finally started doing making words digitally, it was SO much better!

Today we'll be talking about our routines for making words, how to use DIGITAL making words mats, and I'll walk you through an entire sample lesson!

Types of Making Words Mats

After I gave up on passing out letter cards, I used two different kinds of mats: dry erase boards and digital. I love both types for different reasons!

Let's talk about the dry erase mats first! I've used just plain dry erase boards had kids spell words with me as I give the clues. But just a blank dry erase board isn't quite structured enough for the little kids. It's hard for them to easily see where the new letters go.

Laminated dry erase mats are a much better option! Just pass out the laminated mats and dry erase markers and they use these just like a dry erase board. I like to use the mats with the Elkonin boxes to help give the kids structure for where to write their words. This resource has 4 options of mats though with and without letters and Elkonin boxes.

If you're ready to go all digital with your making words, or want to continue making words with distance learning or Google classroom, digital mats are perfect!

You can manipulate the letters by clicking and dragging so it makes a great alternative to the traditional letter cards. Digital mats can also be used on iPads or in Google classroom. They can also be used on your interactive white board if you just want to do the activity all together!

Making Words Routines

This routine is quick and predictable in our classroom. Just like my Super Phonics lessons, each lesson is basically the same with different content or word. So the kids pick up the routine quickly and it just gets smoother and quicker as the year goes on!

There is at least one making words lesson for each of my first grade Super Phonics units. I try to work these in as a whole group lesson a couple times a week at the beginning of the year when we need more whole group activities and then as the year goes on, we do less of this as a whole class, and more of it in small group interventions.

Here is the basic routine (and it's outlined in detail in the video below):

Go over the letter names and sounds of each letter in the lesson
Build a starting word
You give them the new word and the kids have to figure out the letter or letters to substitute to build that word
You give them the letters to substitute and the kids have to figure out what the word is
Guess my word: You give students clues about a longer (usually 2-syllable) word to spell with the feature sound

You can watch my full explanation and model of a blends and digraphs lesson in this video.