Velcro Folders for Making Words

In first and second grade, one of the activities I loved to work with my students on was making words. Making words is also one of the activities that is part of the Four Blocks “Working with Words” section.

In making words, students are provided with a specific set of letters. These sets of letters can be used to make a variety of words, word families, or spelling patterns. By using the set of letters to create various words, students can develop a better understanding of spelling principles, but also how if you know the spelling of one word it can help you spell other words as well.

A sample lesson might start out with the letters a, t, b, c, f, m, r, n, d. The teacher might start out by saying, “Start by making the word ‘at’.” What letter could we add to the front of ‘at’ to make a new word?” Another way to work with students is by making all combinations of two letter words, then all combinations of three letter words, then four, etc. With the letters above you can make at, bat, cat, fat, mat, rat, an, can, fan, man, ran, tan, and, band, brand – just to name a few! Together we would work through the activity, giving each child a chance to make and break the words individually.

As we worked through the lesson I would invite students to come up and model making the word using my large letters on the pocket chart. This provided a scaffold for students still working on the letter and allowed me to make informal observations about students’ understanding.

I made sure students had multiple copies of each letter in their folder. This allowed them to make several words without having to break down each word in between. For making words, I had a set of large letters on square pieces of paper (one color for consonants, one color for vowels). These were the letters I used on the pocket chart to model the making words lesson. Each student had their own smaller set of matching letters that they kept in a manila folder. The top flap of the folder had two plastic bags attached. In one bag the student kept their vowels, in the other bag consonants. On the bottom flap of the manila envelope were strips of velcro. Each letter had a small piece of velcro on the back. When students made the words, they attached them to the velcro. This allowed them to hold up their folder for me to see their words without the words falling off and it helped the letters stay where they were supposed to on the child’s work mat.

In Four Blocks, part of the making words activity involves looking for patterns within the words (for example, seeing the pattern between at, bat, cat, hat, etc.) By sorting words by their pattern, students are focusing on the features of the word and understanding how looking at onsets and rimes can help their reading and writing skills. At the end of the lesson, when all the words are sorted and read, students can practice transferring and applying new knowledge by naming and writing a new word that fits into the spelling pattern (for example, adding 'that' or 'sat') to the word list.

After students have had practice with the format of making words, this activity can easily be transferred to a literacy center. Students can be provided with a set of letters and work through the process to make, read, and write as many words as they can. It can also be extended to a homework activity where parents or older siblings can support learning as well.