Working Idea
Different ways of spelling rhymes
Do the different spellings for the rhyming parts of words bother you? You’re not alone. People have been complaining about this for hundreds of years.
One way of dealing with different spellings is to keep a list of words for each spelling. You may not remember which word goes into which list, but at least you can learn what some of the possible spellings are.
The most common medium used for work with word families in the community literacy programs is pencil-and-paper. This is the cheapest, most available medium. However, there are other relatively cheap and available media. For example, a highlighter felt pen can be useful for emphasizing spelling patterns as visual patterns.
Writing word families on cards allows tutors/facilitators and students to study words in different orders, to physically move words in and out of different word families, and in and out of sentences. Cards give written words a physical life which they cannot have when they are stuck in a particular place on a particular piece of paper. On cards, words are harder to identify than in lists or sentences on a piece of paper because they can appear unexpectedly, in various unpredictable orders, and in unpredictable places. They can be used, by tutors/facilitators or by students, to create new lists and new sentences in creative, unexpected ways.
As well as allowing for flexibility in the short term, cards provide a long term record of words and word families that have been words on. This long term record can help learners and tutors/facilitators to assess progress, set goals, and make plans.
Scissors can be a useful enhancement of paper-and-pencil or cards. Cutting up parts of words, such as rhymes and initial consonants, and putting them back together again can be useful.
In some community literacy programs, students have access to an electronic medium for cutting up words, and moving words and parts of words around: the computer. Student who want to learn word processing can work with word families at the same time, moving words into columns by means of the tab key or a mouse, breaking up words with the space bar, etc. Brenda, a literacy librarian at Parkdale Public Library, has found an effective technique to use in the computer group for adult literacy learners she facilitates. (See Working Ideas Box.)
Working Idea
Are you working with a computer? If so, you have probably already learned some of the ways that you can move words and letters round on the computer screen.
Some students like to study how to break up words and put them together again using the computer. As they learn how to use the computer, they are also doing work that can help them to sound out words. Here is an example: Use the space bar to break into words:
bancanfanrantan
baggaghaglagnag
cabdabgabjablab
billfillhillmillpill
tenmenbendenpen
cogjoghoglogfog