Spelling Strategy - Word Families

Spelling Strategy - Word Families

What is a Word Family?
Word Families are simply words that have some of the same combinations of letter combinations in them. When you sound them out, you will often hear similar sounds - but as always with the English language, there are exceptions.

Word families get kids to look for words that have the same letter combinations, so that they build up mental pictures of the words in their mind and also learn the sound that certain letter combinations make. Once kids are on a roll with word families, the list can seem endless.

What can I do?

Card games:
Have a set of cards that contains the beginnings and ends of words and a set of cards that has a middle letter combination on them. Put them in three separate piles. Kids take turns taking cards from the piles and trying to combine them to make words.

fr ee ze
sn ee ze
m ee t
sl ee t

fl oa t
m oa n
f oa m
b oa t

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Storyteller:
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