This simple, hands-on & engaging activity is perfect to help build fluency for your young reader! It helps them build onset and rime skills, a foundational skill to blend sounds into words.
Did I mention that the materials are likely ones that you already have on hand?
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XO Gina
Materials:
Sticky notes
Notecard or sentence strip
Stapler
Marker
How- to:
Grab stack of sticky notes & write a consonant on each one. Consonants are any letters that are NOT vowels (a, e, i, o, u). You can use a variety of consonants that your reader is familiar with to help them build fluency.
On a note card or sentence strip write a word family such as “at” or “it”. You can use any combination of vowel and consonant to make real or nonsense words.
Staple the stack of sticky notes to the note card or sentence strip.
Flip through the stack, blend and read the word!
What is onset and rime?
All words are made of onset and rimes. Focusing on one rime at a time helps students to build their word bank. An onset is the initial sound of a word. This can be a single sound, digraph, or blend; anything that comes before the vowel of a word. The rime is the part of the word that comes after the onset. We sometimes refer to this as the “word family”.
It is natural for children to sound out each letter as they are beginning through the reading process. Activities like this offer an opportunity for them to practice the next step: chunking the ending sounds (rime) together. So instead of reading /p/ /a/ /t/, they are saying /p/ at/.
As they do this, they become more automatic in their blending. When they become more automatic in their blending, their fluency will increase. When their fluency increases, it takes way less effort and becomes more enjoyable!!
What is a pseudo word?
A nonsense word is a silly, made-up word that has no meaning. They can be used to practice important early-literacy skills. This is SO helpful for early readers because it’s forces them to use letter-sound knowledge to accurately sound out & blend the word together to read. They can’t guess or try to memorize the pattern.
What should you do before this word work activity?
Practice blending two-letter words (eg: at, in, on).
Before you introduce this activity to your learner you will want to ensure that they are familiar with the consonants and the rime, or word family, that you are working with.
What are the benefits?
Hands-on learning activities provide children with an opportunity to make connections to what they are learning.
As they strengthen letter-sound correspondence, they are increasing their fluency, which leads to them being stronger readers.
The repetition of the same rime helps student build their word bank memory.
Want to extend your learning?
Download our FREE word family lists to challenge your learner to practice different words.
Have your child read the word. Ask them to change the beginning sound without flipping the sticky note: the word is /bit/. Change the /b/ to a /s/. What is the word?
Add consonant blends to the beginning for higher level learners.
Check it out in action: https://www.instagram.com/reel/CzpqRAGsfwE/?hl=en
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