Making Words

 

What is Making Words?

Making Words is a fast-paced, hands-on manipulative activity in which students learn how adding letters and moving letters around creates new words. This technique comes from Patricia Cunningham's book Month-by-Month Phonics for Third Grade: Systematic, Multilevel Instruction for Third Grade.

In a Making Words activity, students learn that there are patterns in words, that a little change in the letters of a word changes it in a predictable way, and that words can be sorted into patterns and then used to read and spell other words.

 

What happens in a Making Words lesson?

Each Making Words lesson uses a specific set of letters. Each set of letters can be used to form a "secret word." The secret word is spelled using all the letters in the lesson.

In the lesson, I call out a word and a sentence using that word. The students use their set of letters to spell that word. I have all of the students write the word on a piece of notebook paper after they make the word with their letters. Then I call on one student to write the word on the board.

The words get longer as the lesson progresses. The words that the students create in each lesson focus on two or three common spelling or word patterns including prefixes, suffixes, and root words. After making about 8 or 10 words, the students are challenged to make the "secret word" using all of their letters.

At the end of the lesson, we create "transfer" words. These transfer words use the same spelling patterns from the Making Words lesson, but may include other letters. The transfer words help all children use words they know to decode and spell other words.

 

How does this help my students?

Making Words activities are able to meet the range of reading and writing levels in the classroom. The activities always begin with some short, easy words so that students can see how small changes affect the words. As the lesson continues, the words get bigger and more complex. A few words not commonly known by many third graders are included. There are sentence examples and meanings for these words, and this helps enlarge the vocabularies of more advanced students. Figuring out the secret word is often a challenge for even the most advanced readers.

As they sort the words by patterns, different children will notice different things. Not all students will understand how unable, unseal, and unsinkable are alike and related to the root words, but many can.

 

Teacher Tip!

While many teachers give each student a set of magnetic or plastic letters to use during Making Words lessons, I've found a faster and cheaper method that I use in my classroom. I found that sorting, passing out, taking up, and storing all of those plastic letters took too much time!

Instead, I have my students cut the bottom four rows off of a piece of plain notebook paper. They write the letters for the day's Making Words lesson on that strip and cut the letters apart. It's fast and easy. At the end of the lesson, the letters can go in the trash, or the students can take home their set of letters to challenge their parents to make the "secret word."

 

Sample Making Words Lesson

1. Take the letters a, e, i, u, b, k, l, n, n, and s.

2. Use two letters to spell the word us.

3. Add one letter to spell use.

4. Add one letter to spell seal.

5. Take four letters and spell usable.

6. Continue for these words: Sal, sane, lane, able, sink, blink, insane, unable, unseal.

7. Use all the letters to make the "secret" word. (unsinkable)

8. Sort the words by patterns:

*usable, unsinkable

*unable, unseal, unsinkable

*sane, lane, insane

*sink, blink

9. Use those spelling patterns to spell the "transfer" words:

think, crane, stink, shrink