Developmental Spelling meet Picture Sorting

Do you love picture sorting as much as I do?  Don't you wish your students could spell the words after they get through sorting?  These 3 books are designed to do just that!

You may have seen my first two, but the 3rd book focuses on contrasting all the short vowel combinations while including blends and digraphs.

Picture sorting is an awesome way to help your students develop Phonemic Awareness.  Students manipulate the pictures by cutting, sorting and gluing them in categories.  Because they are pictures, students are forced to listen and feel for the sounds in their mouth.

I have had picture sorting a major part of my reading curriculum for some time.  However, I have always had the students spell the pictures by using their invented spelling because most picture sorting materials use any words.  Some have many syllables, and others are a higher level than a student who is picture sorting would be able to spell. I dreamed of someday creating all of my own picture sorts that would contain ONLY pictures that would be developmentally appropriate to spell.
I have finally created these.

If you are new to picture sorting, you must get into a routine of introducing the pictures before the activity.  Even simple pictures are not always interpreted the same by students.  However, it is well worth the effort, because in picture sorting, the student is active and in charge.  They are not being talked to, but they are listening to themselves and feeling the sounds in their own mouth instead of listening to the teacher while the teacher is in charge of the phonemic awareness activity/routine.

I feel the picture sorting is one of the biggest "bang for your buck" in the teaching of beginning reading.  Once you establish a routine of picture sorting, so many "aha" moments occur for both teachers and students.  As a teacher, when you observe a student saying a sound wrong, you understand that your student will not understand those letter combinations until they are making those sounds in their mouth correctly.  One of the most common examples is the word drive.  Many teachers know that students who are beginning to learn to read spell it JRIV.  This is because they are feeling it that way in their mouth.  But picture sorting gives you a chance to discuss it with students and not have the focus be on the letters, but on the formation of the sound in their mouth.  In addition, you are also providing another way of learning to spell by incorporating the kinesthetic association with their mouth.

Another way to focus on how the letters are formed are to teach kids about voiced and unvoiced consonant sounds.  For example, B and P are both made the same way except one is made with your voice and the other with a puff of air.  Highlighting this for your students will help them to become fluent in letter-sound correspondence and help them get through the letter-sound (letter-name) level more quickly.  I tried to highlight these combinations in the Word Family Cut Paste and Spell book.  Here is a sample page that focuses on ending voiced and unvoiced consonant sounds:

As an added bonus, students get practice cutting and pasting.  Fine motor skills lead to advancements in other areas as well.  I have noticed that when I teach handwriting solidly in the beginning of the year, that my students are much better writers by the end of the year content-wise.  This is because fluency in handwriting frees up brain space so that students can concentrate on what they are writing and not how they are writing it.  Don't let anyone tell you handwriting is not important.   Interested in the link between handwriting and quality writing?  Google "handwriting fluency" and you will see that there are many studies that link it with writing quality.  Click HERE for one good article. But I am digressing.  Just know that LOTS of cutting and pasting are good for students.

Here are some free samples of the books.  I hope you like them!

Book 1  Cut, Paste, and Spell Word Families Mini Sample

Book 2 Cut, Paste, and Spell CVC Words--Contrasting All Vowels Mini Sample

Book 3 Cut, Paste, and Spell-- Blends and Digraphs--Contrasting All Vowels Mini Sample


To purchase the full books, please visit my TPT store here: 

Cut, Paste & Spell Picture Sorting Books 1, 2 & 3 Combo Pack Phonemic Awareness

They are also sold separately if you are interested in a particular one.

Thanks for stopping by! 

10 more days of school for me!  How about you?


Wishing you the best summer!

Anna

How Kids Learn Words

The order in which children learn to look at words is no secret.  It is not a random sequence that depends on the words to which he/she is exposed.  Here are the three stages of word learning:

Level 1:  Sound

A student understands that sounds are put together to make up words.

Level 2:  Pattern

A student is able to look at several letters at a time and memorize a group of letters.  Many sight words are gained at this time  (If a child is not at this stage, it is bad advice to tell a parent to go and work on a child's sight word knowledge).  Trying to memorize sight words would be an inefficient use of time.  I will be discussing this in greater depth in the next few posts.

Level 3:  Meaning

A student is able to relate a word's spelling to its meaning.  In the word "pleasure", you do not hear a long e sound.  A student at this level is able to understand that it comes from the word "please" and relate the spelling of the two words.  

Reading and Spelling


I often tell teachers, parents, and students, that I do not teach word study so that students will be better spellers, I teach word study so that students will be better readers. Watching a child spell a word can give me a window into their mind. 

Looking at the way a child misspells a word, gives me a clue to the patterns in words that they do not know solidly. So I know that when they read, they are not noticing those patterns, or not reading them quickly. This can create readers who rely on context too heavily, or readers who have to slow down and sound out the pattern that has not been mastered. 

Improving a student's knowledge of spelling creates more fluent readers. This, in turn, will increase their reading level, because they will be able to focus on the meaning of the text at a higher level. In addition, when students reach the "Derivational Relations" stage of spelling, they are increasing their vocabulary knowledge dramatically because knowing one Greek or Latin root can help them figure out many words, not just one.

Feel free to email me with any questions or leave comments.  I love comments :)

Next Post:  Why repetitive teaching of letters and sounds to beginning readers is not an efficient use of your time.  

Free Elkonin Task Cards

In honor of Cyber Monday, I am giving away my Elkonin Short A picture task cards.  I successfully avoided shopping at the stores that opened on Thanksgiving this weekend, instead I bought a few things from small businesses on TPT (for myself!).  I don't think I will be able to avoid going to the big stores, though, when I start to really shop for my boys.  Fortunately for me, as I am sure many of you can relate, they are out of the toy phase, so cleaning up is slightly easier.  But unfortunately toys are cheaper than what they are asking for.  It's always electronics these days.  Maybe I will be able to avoid it if I shop online.  If anyone knows of any small businesses that sell electronics, drop me a line.

So to those of you trudging to work today like I am after this nice long break for Thanksgiving, here is a small token for all that you do.  I love these cards.  I use them for seat work during center rotation (or as my principal prefers, "Literacy Stations").

Am I the only teacher who thinks it is hysterical when kids are spelling one of these words and gets to the end of a word,  suddenly pauses in confusion, thinking to themselves, "um, there's two more squares left and I only felt/heard one?"  I just love to watch them look around wondering what to do and then finally decide they are going to try to sound it out slower and feel for those last two sounds.

It's the little things......

 If you are interested in the rest of the short vowel task cards, visit my Teachers Pay Teachers store.


Short A Elkonin Task Cards

5 Short Vowel sets of Elkonin Task Cards 

Happy Monday!

Anna

Elkonin Boxes

Welcome Manic Monday visitors!  I hope you enjoy this Elkonin box freebie.  I can't wait to see all of your submissions as well.  Come on in and take a look around.  There are other freebies on this site to be had. Visit the home page: tchrgrl.blogspot.com

Elkonin Boxes help students build phonological awareness by guiding them to count the number of sounds in the word and emphasize to them that it does not always translate to the same number of letters).

Elkonin Boxes  help students better understand the alphabetic principle in decoding and spelling.  Using Elkonin boxes strategically with students in the letter-name phase can help advance a student’s knowledge of spelling.  Elkonin boxes help students build phonological awareness by guiding them to count the number of sounds in the words.  I have found them helpful in training students to slow down and feel for all of the sounds in the words, especially the ending blends.  In addition, students in my class who have been slow to pick up on beginning digraphs (sh, th, ch), are automatically reminded to consider that the sound is represented by two letters and then use the charts in the room to recall which two letters make that sound.  Invented spelling is great for writing for several reasons, but I love that Elkonin boxes require students to practice spelling rules and patterns-especially if a teacher can correlate them to the student’s spelling level.  For example, Elkonin boxes centered on short vowels, blends and digraphs can be used with students in the letter-name phase and Elkonin boxes centered on long vowel patterns can be used with students in the within word phase of spelling.  

I will be creating more long vowel resources in the future, but for now, my creations have focused on short vowels.  Here is a short vowel elkonin box worksheet I created for the short a sound:

Short A Elkonin Boxes Freebie

Elkonin Boxes Set of 5 Short Vowels Printables

Late Letter-Name Assessment

Here is an example of a letter-name test (I wanted lots of ending blends) I made up to figure out which letter/letter patterns Mary was using and which ones she was confusing.  I know that there are forms to fill out in various word study books, but my personal preference is not to use another piece of paper.  I simply write the features that are missing and being confused and then look for patterns.

As you can see, Mary writes the letter A each time she hears short O and short U.  She has not mastered ch or th, beginning blends-dr and tr, and ending blends.

Now, many word study teachers might say that this is too much detail to go into, and that may be true.  You do not have to find out each feature to be a great word study teacher.  This is because teaching letter-name features each week in the approximate zone they are in will solidify the student's existing knowledge and enable him/her to naturally add to his/her knowledge of words with exposure during reading.  I would put this student in a group that focused on ending blends and short vowels.  However, this particular student was retained last year and I want extensive detail about her knowledge so that I can track progress that seems to be slow. If myself or someone has time to work with this student, I quickly pull out my picture sorts comparing short A and short U. In addition, when I taught any grade beyond first grade, I would do this with below level students.  There is not the luxury of time in that case, to mess around with stuff they already know.

*The most interesting thought about this assessment that I have been thinking about a lot lately:  It seems when a word contains a pattern a student is nervous about (--mp for example), he/she can make a mistake on the short vowel that is known in most other circumstances. This is interesting to me because that would be an additional way to read a child's mind to find out which vowels they seem to have, but could use reinforcement on.  This late-letter name assessment may be useful for that reason as well.

If you are interested in the assessment, you can download it here:  http://tinyurl.com/cltv8j5