Saturday, November 22, 2008

Word Work

During independent work time, 5 students can choose word work. These are activities that encourage building and writing high frequency words or spelling words. I have chosen activities that are easily differentiated and can be used the entire year. To make the activities easy to access and individual I put all needed materials in a tub along with a white board, marker and sock (which is used as an eraser) The following is a description of the materials I include in a tub. The magnetic letters are great tools for word building. I store my magnetic letters in an old cake pan. The students build their words on a metal burner cover. I bought a set of 4 at a dollar store and I include 2 in the tub.
Squeezers are words written on paint sticks that have corresponding letter clothespins. Students take the clothespins off and build a high frequency word. I add one or two new words per week depending on what words we are working on. As a challenge students can assemble the word while the paint stick is flipped over.

The name puzzles are the names of each child in my class and myself. The names are written on a sentence strip then cut apart to create the puzzle. The puzzles are placed in an envelope. I also include a sentence strip with the student's name written on it so that children who need support can use it as a guide. As a challenge student's can hide the name strip and envelope and assemble the name without support. Students can also look for high frequency words within their classmate's names.

The letter stamps tub does not include a white board. Instead students stamp their words on a blank piece of paper. They can trace the tops of their words for writing practice

The letter beads are simular to the magnetic letters. This is simply another tool for word building.