Guest Blog-New Year, New Ideas, New Possibilities

New Year, New Ideas, New Possibilities Linky Party!

Hello everyone! My name is Mo from More Than Math by Mo and I am super excited to be part of this wonderful blog hop hosted by the ladies from Primary Possibilities

Before I begin, let me tell you a little about myself.  I am in my 8th year of teaching various grades from PK-2nd as well as ESL/ELL.  I am a wife and mother of 2 wonderful boys.  I have been following blogs for many years now.  I always told myself I didn't have the time to create my own.  Over this past summer I realized that teachers in the blogging world have given me so many wonderful ideas over the past years that I decided it was time I shared my own talents with everyone.  In September 2012 I opened my TeachersPayTeachers store and the following month (October) my blog was born.

Now that you know a little about me, I would like to talk about teaching word families (onset/rime).

It seems as though every year I was putting a different plan in place for teaching onset and rime to my students and each year I reflected on my activities and was not 100% happy.  Over the summer I decided to come up with a solution to my problem.  That solution manifested into "Word" Family Trees.  

          

This resource (which is now a product for sale in my TpT store) consists of the same activities each week by simply changing out the word families that are focused on (saves time from having to teach a new center format).  I work on 2 word families at a time in order to do some comparing, contrasting, and sorting.  I will take you through the cycle of activities that are done each week.

1.  The first activity introduces words from the word families. (prior to this I introduce the new word families and have the whole class brainstorm a list of words) Students read sentences, circle words from the target rimes and sort the words they circled by writing them into the chart at the bottom of the page.

  

2.  The second activity in the packet can be changed throughout the year.  The printable includes word cards cut apart by onset and rime. (See image below)  There are many options with this printable.  I suggest an activity that suits your students best.

Here is an example of one way that I use this activity in my classroom:

   

3.I break the final activity into 2 days.  This activity involves students creating a "family" tree for each word family from that week.  They write words onto leaves then cut out and glue leaves onto a tree.  

  

Once the trees are completed, I like to choose a few to display near our word wall for students to use as reference. (students usually color the tree brown but this was the only picture I had on hand-sorry)

I have found that having the same basic activities repeated week after week has not only helped me as far as planning, but it has also helped my students remember what is expected of them therefore more learning takes place as oppose to listening to instructions.

If you are interested in implementing this product in your classroom, here are the products that I offer:
***Click on any title or picture to download or simply to find out more about that specific product***

--A FREEBIE for you to test out with your class.

---"Word" Family Trees-Set 1:Word Work for 12 Word Families -includes 12 long vowel word families, all containing "silent"e

---"Word" Family Trees-Set 2: Word Work for 12 Word Families -includes 12 more long vowel families that are not covered in set 1
---Save Money and purchase both set in a bundle- "Word" Family Tree Bundle-includes Word Family Trees Word Work Sets 1 & 2

Other Word Family Products that I offer:

I want to thank Mrs. Bohaty for having me over today! I had fun and I hope you'll stop by my blog sometime.  

Now head on over to Teaching Spanish Beginning Sounds for more blogging fun!  

  

now go visit the ladies over at Spanish Beginning sounds for more blogging fun!

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