Making Words: An Update

Making Words is an engaging word building activity that helps link your students’ knowledge of letter-sound relationships with phonemic awareness.

If you have used this activity in the past, you know how much students learn from it, but I now recommend some changes in how the activity is done so students can practice both encoding and decoding skills. Going back and forth between encoding and decoding helps to create flexible word solvers and solidifies visual and auditory synchrony. 

Watch this video to see me explain the newly updated Making Words procedure.

Here are some suggested Making Words lessons you can use with some of our new Phonics Storybooks!

Phonics Focus: Short Vowels a and i

Have students remove the following letters from their trays: a, b, f, g, i, p, and r.

• Make the word: pig.
• Change the p to b and read the word: big.
• Make the word: bag.
• Change the b to r and read the word: rag.
• Make the word: rig.
• Change the r to f and read the word: fig.

Phonics Focus: Initial Digraph sh

Have students remove the following letters from their trays: a, f, h, i, n, o, p, s, and t.

• Make the word: fin.
• Change the f to sh and read the word: shin.
• Make the word: ship.
• Change the i to o and read the word: shop.
• Make the word: top.
• Change the o to a and read the word: tap.

Phonics Focus: Initial Blend sp

Have students remove the following letters from their trays: h, i, n, o, p, s, t, and u.

• Make the word: spin.
• Change the n to t and read the word: spit.
• Make the word: spot.
• Change the sp to n and read the word: not.
• Make the word: shot.
• Change the o to u and read the word: shut.