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Word Families are a natural building block in the reading process. After teaching letter sounds and those all important short vowels the next step is word families. Being able to sound out and blend those simple CVC word family words can turn a book looker into a reader!
As a kindergarten teacher, we spend a lot of time in our school year on word families. Teaching word families allows you to work on many key language arts skills like:
- Letter Sounds
- Blending
- Rhyming
- Comprehension, and
- Spelling
All of these fundamental skills are worth spending time on, lots of time! The better your students master these concepts the easier the next steps will be.
Am I Crazy?
I spent some time thinking about a new, fun way for my students to practice all of these skills with word families. I got a wild hair and thought to myself “Am I CRAZY for wanting to do an Interactive Notebook in Kindergarten?”
My immediate answer was “YES! Run as fast as you can from the idea of interactive notebooks.” But I couldn’t. It was like my mind was stuck in quicksand and I couldn’t escape the thought. I really love so many things about Interactive Notebooks so I decided to embrace it and see what I could put together.
Practice, Practice, Practice
The end result was a single page that gave my students so many ways to practice word families. On each page, students work on rhyming words, spelling words, reading words, sentence unscrambling, reading comprehension and writing a sentence with a picture to match for comprehension check.
Word Families in Action
When it was time to introduce the new Word Family Interactive Notebook to my students we took it in baby steps. You guys – I am now convinced that this was the key to success in our classroom. We started slow with lots of explicit instruction.
The very first day we didn’t use a notebook at all. Instead we just worked on the “how to” of completing each activity. After explaining and modeling the students began working independently. I walked around and guided and the students through their first attempt.
It was not until the next day that we pulled out the notebooks. Day 2 was all about the cutting and gluing. I modeled each activity and how to cut it and glue. In the process I also created our Master Notebook that students could always go to for an example.
We repeated the process of students working independently with me walking around to help. Sure there were a few cuts on the wrong line and a little too much glue, but that’s kindergarten! All in all it was a huge success and the students were exited to do it again.
An On-going Portfolio
After practicing a couple of times as a class, the students began completing the interactive note booking pages independently.
They love them and I love all the information I can get from reviewing their work.
The Word Family Interactive Notebooks have become an on-going portfolio. Now I can see the growth their reading and writing skills and so can the students.
Give it a Try!
I think you and your students will LOVE these pages. I want to give you a chance to try it out with your class for free. If you will take the time at the beginning to introduce, teach and model these pages with your students, it will payoff in the end. Just click on the image below to download your free sample of the Interactive Word Families Interactive Notebook Pages.
You can find the complete set of Word Families Interactive Notebook Pages in my Teachers Pay Teachers store. At less than 15 cents a page you can’t go wrong!
