Word chains Freebie Printable Activity

Word chains make it easier to learn new words. Putting one’s memory and fast thinking to the test is useful. Word games benefit students since they help them become more literate while still having fun.
10-week challenge.

Word Chain– No prep activity.

All you need is this printout, whiteboards, and whiteboard markers or use our Virtual Blending Boards.
Word chains are an excellent way to help children develop the key reading skills of blending, segmenting and manipulating phonemes (adding, deleting and swapping sounds). This collection of abilities is known as ‘phonemic awareness’, which is one of the most reliable markers of potential reading struggles. With good phonemic awareness, children are more likely to become competent readers and those who find it challenging may be at risk of issues with their reading development. Therefore, word chains should form an important part in any phonics program to make sure kids get enough exercise in these basic skills.

How do word chains work?

In a word chain activity, the teacher has a list of words that involve one change from one word to the next. This can be adding, deleting or replacing sounds. To do this, the teacher needs to make letter cards using letters – ensuring digraphs stay together. He/she will ask a pupil to build and read a word, for example, ‘dog’. The teacher will then instruct them to change ‘dog’ to ‘log’ and move their finger underneath it whilst saying the new word. The pupil should identify where the change has been made and add/delete/replace letters accordingly. Blending and reading aloud is necessary in the early stages, but with practice, this can be skipped as the pupil gets faster at identifying changes. This activity is suitable for all age groups as it teaches that each letter corresponds to a distinct sound.

It is important to note that this is an activity that develops phonemic skills, not code knowledge. Once the students are able to recall the letters used in the activity and have developed their ability to blend and segment 3-5 sounds in words, this activity can be completed. Without automatic recall calls and some blending skills, they may experience cognitive overload.

Using a lowercase ‘s’ for the name on this occasion (this can be discussed with the student), here is an example of a word chain: ‘am – sam – sat’

How to write your own word chain

It is important to follow these principles when writing your own word chains:

• Keep your words to one syllable
• If vowel digraphs and trigraphs are included, it becomes too confusing.
• Change only one thing at a time
• Use real words or nonsense words (let the child know if you are using nonsense words).
• Avoid words with irregular spelling patterns, like ‘pik’, which is spelled ‘pick’ in English
• To minimize confusion, only include the letters needed for this activity.

Our website offers Free word chains that you can use to get started. Make sure to check our Virtual Segmentinghttps://game.edukidss.com/ and Blending Boards. You can find the here.

You can download them by clicking on these links:

Word Chain.

Great Partners:

• Counting syllables 
• Stuck on Decoding? 5 Ways to Scaffold Instruction

Check these Free Digital Libraries: Reading and Writing.

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