Today's step: Observe patterns and trends is all about helping students to make connections about different spelling patterns. For example: if students notice that the last four letters in these two words (light, sight) are the same and sound the same. Then spelling words with similar patterns (night, right, flashlight, tight) becomes much easier.
The following activities can help students recognize patterns between words.
Word families are groups of words that have the same ending pattern. There are numerous activities that you can use with word families. A few that I've created are:
Nursery Rhyme Themed Word Family Games
Give a dog a bone - File folder games
Phonics Word Wheels
Another site that I love that has tons of free printables for word families is a site called WordWay. When I say tons of stuff I really mean it, this is an excellent site.
Word ladders are a great activity for students to recognize patterns between words. A word ladder starts with a word at the bottom of the ladder. The objective is to change the first word into the second word by changing parts of the original word using clues and directions into new words until you reach the top of the ladder.
There are numerous commercial word ladder that you can purchase but I've got a great set of word ladders for first and second grade that you can get for only $3.50.
These word ladders are all Pirate themed so they can be more motivating for students to complete.
Click on the link to learn more about these great pirate word ladders.