Word Families

This past week and next week I am introducing word families. The word family I am beginning with is 'at'. These are words such as:

• Cat
• Hat
• Sat
• Mat
• Rat

I believe teaching word families will also help children produce rhyming words, as it will give them more exposure to similar sounding words. However, my main focus on this lesson is to teach onset and rhyme. For example the onset in these words are:

• /C/
• /H/
• /S/
• /M/
• /R/

And, the rhyme is /at/ for each word.

In my lesson, I will be introducing this lesson by using a Christmas tree which says _at in the middle. There will be five different ornaments on each ornament will be a beginning letter sound such as, C, H, S, M, and R. Children will place the initial letter sound to the word family 'at'. Then say the word outline. I will ask children to identify each word. Then, next week I will place this at the literacy center and they will work independently or in pairs to identify each word.