Small Group: Word Chains

Hi All! Thank you so much for all of the work you put into our data meeting this week.  I love how you all worked together to represent our students and our school.  As we begin our Patriot Blocks, warm up activities can be so valuable hitting different holes our readers are struggling with.  Word Chains are perfect activities for our students to engage in & they are provided in our Fly Lead Book sets.  

What is a Word Chain????

A word chain is a hands on activity that helps students build neural connections for automatic word recognition. It helps to map the orthography of words to sounds. Students will explore the relationship between phonemes and graphemes as they listen for the sound change in the words.  Word chaining supports phonetic patterns, manipulating sounds in words & reading words.  Students will be activity engaged in "chaining" which is a sequence of words that can be made by changing just one sound.  

Changes can be at the beginning, middle or end of the word.  

Here is a simple video to walk you through a word chain. 

When you are planning your small group lessons, word chains would be a perfect fit for a warm up or making words activity.  Connecting the skill/pattern for your chain should support your mini lesson from Letterland.  Remember there is power in repetition! 

Word Chains can be made with the following materials:

• Magnetic Letters
• Letter Cards

These are the cards that come with our Flyleaf Kits:

• Dry Erase Boards & Markers 
• Jamboard!

Have your students organize their letters as vowels at the top and consonants in the middle, then a space for the word building at the bottom.  

Click the image to grab a copy of this word chain board in Jamboard!

Be sure that you ask students to change one sound at a time. 

Those changes can be:

• adding a sound
• deleting a sound
• changing a sound 

Here is an example of a word chaining lesson from one of our emergent reader lessons in Flyleaf.  Click Here to view the whole lesson. 

Once the word has been built, students should tap under each letter and say the sound.  Then run their finger under the letters and read the word.  

This video from Reading in Room 11 is great for walking you through the process!

Here are some FREE resources that help you get started word chaining with your students!

Pair this lesson with a decodable text or passage with the corresponding skill and you will make a POWERFUL connection for your students!