Currently and a Short A Smartboard Lesson FREEBIE

I have decided to link up with Farley from Oh' Boy 4th grade and join her monthly linky in honor of my unexpected snow day.

Phonics is my thing thus my blog title:)  I do weekly mini lessons that are phonics/Fundations related in classrooms K-2.  In doing this I have created smartboard lessons to accompany the concepts that I teach.  Today I am going to share how I begin Kindergarten word families.   I always begin with the short A families, which I am sure that is no surprise since they are the easiest.


I always start out by brainstorming with the kids what they know about FAMILIES.  I use the picture to show how families can be similar.

 

 In the end, we discuss that families can not only "look" the same but "sound" the same as well.

 

We then discuss that words can also be members of a family that "look" the same and "sound" the same.  If you are into WBT (Whole Brain Teaching) then teach the students to cup their ear for "sound" the same and put a finger under the eye for "look" the same.

 

At this point, we usually watch a video that relates to the word family we are discussing.  Hooked on Phonics has excellent videos that the kids love for all the short vowel word families.  SchoolTube has all the videos for free.

 

Then we talk about where families can live houses, apartments, etc.  But our word families live in a house.

So the next step is to have the student brainstorm word family words and as they brainstorm I write what they say into the column.  We typically do one family at a time.  As we write words, we also talk about the meaning of words and whether words have blends or digraphs.

 

 After the word family house is complete then we do several activities that relate to the family we are focusing on during that lesson.  This lesson could definitely be broken up into two days especially with kinders!!

Click HERE to get your free copy of the SHORT A mini lesson.

 Feel free to leave any comments or suggestions!