Collect Words with Same Sounds

One important aspect of developing decoding skills is phonemic awareness, that is, an ability to isolate and distinguish different sounds in English. To help children develop phonemic awareness, encourage them to collect words that contain the same sounds.

Note:

a) The target sounds may be isolated phonemes such as /f/ in "fat", blends such as /fl/ in "flat", or rimes (the vowel and any consonant that comes after it in a syllable) such as /at/ in "fat" and "flat".

b) A target sound may be represented by the same or different spellings. For example, the short e sound is spelled with an "e" in "bed" and "red" and also "ea" in "head" and "ai" in "said".

c) The target sounds may occur at the beginning, middle or end of words such as /l/ in "leg", "pillow" and "nail" or long o in "open", "stone", and "hello".

The important thing to emphasize with children for this activity is that they need to listen to the sounds rather than focusing on the letters/spelling.

Procedure

1. Select a target sound for students to collect (see note above). To find a sound that is well represented in a story, check the Phonics section in the Teaching Plan provided for each book or scan the story yourself and look for a sound that is in a number of words.

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2. Ask children to collect as many words as they can that contain the target sound.

• Go to the Read area and under the "Settings" menu select "Reading Style."
• Set the reading style to "Step Word-by-Word" (Macintosh) or "Click Word-by-Word" (Windows).
• Open the My Words list.
• Click the "Read" button continuously to progress the highlight. (Encourage students to listen carefully as each word is read. Explain that they can hear the pronunciation of a word over and over by clicking on the word itself. Click the "Read" button to go to the next word.)
• When children hear a word that contains the target sound, click the plus sign at the bottom of the My Words list to enter it into the list.

3. Make flash cards of the words in the My Words list that can be embellished with student decorations of the target sounds and, on the back, drawings and/or sentence contexts.

• Under the "File" menu select "Print My Words…"
• Click in the middle of the right side to have words printed as cards, then click "Print."
• Cut word card sheets into individual word cards, embellish, and laminate (if desired).

4. Provide opportunities for students to play flash card "games" with each other. Children reading different stories will collect different words.

Customize this Activity

For children who need more support, you can:

• Give instructions to find a target sound only in one location (i.e., either beginning, middle, or end)
• Record the target sound ahead of time using the Teacher Message feature so students can listen over and over and stay focused.

For children who need more challenge, you can:

• Give two target sounds.

WiggleWorks Areas Used

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Related WiggleWorks Basics

• Changing Highlight Settings
• Adding Words to My Words
• Printing My Words
• Recording Teacher Messages