Working With Blends

We've been working on letter blends in our classroom, and I got a new set of Letter Buddies Blends books from Hameray Publishing to use with the class. 

Here's what we did this week:

The first thing we did was take some time to look through the books together. The students quickly noticed that each book had words with the same beginning blends. The clear pictures and simple text made even my lower readers feel confident.

Next, I passed out one book to each student. Students took some time to read each word in their book.

Then, students paired up and read their words to a partner. They did this several times, then switched books with the person behind them. During this activity, I saw lots of great learning and peer teaching going on, as students helped each other read all the words in their books.

We also played a fun game where students could come up to the board and draw a picture of something from their book. The rest of the class had to try to guess their blend and spell the word.

After this we were ready for a project. Again, each student got their own book to work with, and practiced reading all of their words. Then, they made a “flip book” with as shown, with the pictures on the front, and the words under the flaps.  It was made my simply folding colored paper in half and gluing white squares along the bottom. Students then cut between each white square so they could lift the flap and write the word.

Next came more partner sharing: students shared their flip book with at least three other students. Since the words are written underneath, there was a lot of guessing and checking, and later trying to guess at the spelling of the word before looking. Once this was done, they really knew those words well and most could spell them with no assistance! 

To finish up, we decided to have some fun with the letter buddies that are on the back of each book!

After looking at the details of all the letter buddies, students made posters of their own names, copying the details from the book.