Kindergarten: Discovering Word Families
Each week, the kindergarten class takes part in a daily literacy event where we focus on shared reading, concepts of print, letter sounds, sight words, and an overall enjoyment of sharing a good book. Our newest focus this month is teaching the concept of “word families” to the class. A word family is a group of words that share the same ending, for example- AT, IG, OG, EN.
Our first book to introduce a word family was Pat The Cat, a short tale (pun certainly intended) about a cat who is quite……well, fat. The children practiced identifying the words that belong in the “at” family and moved into sounding out the three letter words in the book (cat, fat, hat, mat, sat, rat).
By the end of our second week exploring these books and word families, the children were confidently sounding out and reading three letter words with excitement to the delight of their teachers. It is always a proud moment to watch these little ones move forward in their academic achievements!
“To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.”
-Victor Hugo
