Word Work

Let me begin by saying I am EXHAUSTED.  We had a snow day on Friday and I am still. not. caught. up. *Sigh*  We had a round of parent-teacher conferences last Tuesday night.  They went well.  We have our final night coming up this Thursday.  Between that, being ready for the week without having been at school on Friday, trying to complete all my homework for my reading endorsement, doing laundry, cleaning the house, paying bills, working on new products, trying to get everything ready to file my taxes, and everything else...I'm just wiped out.  But, c'est la vie, right?  ;)

Needless to say, I needed a little "retail therapy."  Enter: GroupDealz.  Please tell me you've been there, right?  I have purchased countless accessories on this site!  It's AMAZING!  They have the best deals EVER!  This is what I just purchased for $9.99!  A lot of their deals aren't on there very long and they add new ones everyday.  This deal expires tonight at midnight.  If you want one, you'd better run!  If I remember correctly, you have to sign up with an e-mail address first before they let you view the deals. It's totally worth it, my friends!  And there's no obligation at all.  You can just browse forever and not buy anything.  But you might just get hooked like moi...

I wanted to let you all know that my March Math Centers - CC Aligned are finally up!  I have put them 10% off for the next 24 hours.  :)

Now on to some Word Work talk!  I do a modified version of The Daily 5, due to our crazy broken-up schedule.  One of the components of it is Word Work.  I have created Word Work packets for every spelling pattern known to man, haha.  I think there are something like 28 packs in my shop!  They range from short vowels to long vowels to digraphs and everything in between.  Let me show you how they work!

Each pack contains 10 different activities that have to do with the phonics pattern for the week.  I bought these fun drawers over the summer.  On the left side, each drawer contains one type of Work Work activity.  I printed off labels and stuck them on each drawer so that the activity stays the same each week.

The first activity is called "Shake Up."  I filled water bottles with colored rice (you pour white vinegar into a bowl of rice, add several drops of food coloring, and mix it up).  Then I copied, laminated, and cut little pieces of cardstock with the phonics pattern within each word.  They shake it up and search for all the words they can find and then write them on a sheet of paper.  The students LOVE this one!

There's also a simple board game using words with the phonics pattern.  Students practice reading words in order to progress on the board.

Next we have the ever popular "I Have, Who Has" game.  This game is best played with 3 or more people, but in all honesty, they have just as much fun doing it with a partner!

Then we have "Build a Word."  In the packet I have letter tiles for this activity, but I actually found a tub of foam cubes on Amazon that I use in my class.  They practice building words with the phonics pattern for the week.

Next is "Word Sort."  They practice recognizing words with the phonics pattern and words without the pattern.

Another activity they like is called, "Line 'Em Up!"  There are 12 words with the phonics pattern that they must put into ABC order.

There are 4 more that I don't have pictures of.   One is "Satisfy the Sentence," which is simply a fill-in-the-blank with words with our phonics pattern.  Looking at them in context helps them learn it!  Then there's "Mystery Word," in which the identify scrambled up words that contain the phonics pattern.  Next is "Locate the Hunks," which are poems where they highlight words with the phonics pattern.  The final one is "Rainbow Words" where they write a particular word with the pattern 3 times, each time using a different colored crayon.

You can find all the Word Work packs HERE!  I hope you enjoy them and get as much use out of them as I do!  My students truly look forward to Word Work each and every week.

Have a blessed week with as little stress as possible!  :)