Making Words Fourth Grade

Description

An active and innovative approach to making words that teachers and their students have grown to love is finally here!

Based on its highly successful parent text, Phonics They Use, this new grade-level series Making Words offers teachers a fresh multi-level activity and lesson series written for the kindergarten through fifth grade classroom. Pat Cunningham and Dottie Hall  present classroom teachers with effective tools for strengthening phonics and spelling skills that encourage students to move beyond learning and into a world of word discovery. Each research-based volume includes a wealth of friendly, hands-on, manipulative activities that guide teachers in teaching the development of words–from phonemic awareness to spelling.

In Making Words Fourth Grade, Pat and Dottie introduce fourth grade teachers to 50 lessons that teach all the prefixes, suffixes, and root skills included in most fourth grade curriculums. Each Making Words activity leads children through a systematic and sequential spelling curriculum. All lessons include practice with prefixes and suffixes as children stretch out words they are making and blend the letters to make new words. Because teaching children letter-sound relationships is easier than teaching children to actually use these letter-sound relationships, all lessons include a transfer step in which children apply the sounds they are learning to spelling new words. 

Making Words Fourth Grade is the best resource you can have on hand for motivating your students to learn words!  

• Features 50 fun and interactive lessons for building decoding and spelling skills.
• Presents a concise method for involving students in the process of identifying common contractions and compound words and more complex vowel patterns within words.
• Promotes student awareness of similarities in words that helps develop writing skills.
• Includes reproducible take-home record sheets to help students build their vocabularies.

• Features 50 fun and interactive lessons for building decoding and spelling skills.
• Presents a concise method for involving students in the process of identifying common contractions and compound words and more complex vowel patterns within words.
• Promotes student awareness of similarities in words that helps develop writing skills.
• Includes reproducible letter tiles, record sheets for each lesson, and take-home sheets to copy, cut, and/or laminate.
• Highlights a list of useful children’s books to extend the Making Words lesson.

Patricia M. Cunningham

The day I entered first grade, I decided I wanted to teach first grade. In 1965, I graduated from the University of Rhode Island and began my teaching career teaching first grade in Key West, Florida. For the next several years, I taught a variety of grades and worked as a curriculum coordinator and special reading teacher in Florida and Indiana.

From the very beginning, I worried about children who struggled learning to read and devised a variety of alternative strategies to teach them to read. In 1974, I received my Ph. D. in Reading Education from the University of Georgia. I developed the Making Words activity while working with Title One teachers in North Carolina where I was the Director of Reading for Alamance County Schools. I have been the Director of Elementary Education at Wake Forest University in Winston Salem, North Carolina since 1980 and have worked with numerous teachers to develop hands-on engaging ways to teach phonics and spelling. In 1991, I published Phonics they Use: Words for Reading and Writing, which is currently available in its fourth edition. Along with Richard Allington, I published Classrooms that Work and Schools that Work.

Dottie Hall and I have worked together on many projects. In 1989, we began developing the Four Blocks Framework, a comprehensive approach to literacy which is used in many schools in the United States and Canada. Dottie Hall and I have  worked together to produce many books, including the first Making Words books and the Month by Month Phonics Books. These Making Words by Grade Level books are in response to requests by teachers across the years to have making words lessons with a scope and sequence tailored to their grade level. We hope you and your students will enjoy these making words lessons and we would love to hear your comments and suggestions.

Dorothy P. Hall

I always wanted to teach young children too! After graduating from Worcester State College in Massachusetts I taught first and second grade. After two years, I moved to North Carolina where I continued teaching in the primary grades. Many children I worked with struggled to learn to read in the newly integrated schools. I wanted to learn more and received my M ED and Ed D in Reading from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

I also worked at Wake Forest University where I met and began to work with Pat Cunningham. After three years teaching at the college level I returned to the public schools and taught third and fourth grade as well being a reading and curriculum  coordinator for my school district. At this time Pat Cunningham and I began to collaborate on a number of projects. In 1989, we developed the Four Blocks Framework, a comprehensive approach to literacy in grades one, two, and three which we later expanded to kindergarten, calling it Building Blocks, and the upper grades, calling it Big Blocks. By 1999 Pat and I had written four Making Words books, a series of Month by Month Phonics Books, and The Teacher’s Guided to Four Blocks and I retired from the school system to devote more time to consulting and writing. I also went back to work at Wake Forest University where I taught courses in Reading, Children’s Literature, and Language Arts Instruction for elementary education students. I am now Director of the Four Blocks Center at Wake Forest University and enjoy working with teachers a

An active and innovative approach to making words that teachers and their students have grown to love is finally here!

Based on its highly successful parent text, Phonics They Use, this new grade-level series Making Words offers teachers a fresh multi-level activity and lesson series written for the kindergarten through fifth grade classroom. Pat Cunningham and Dottie Hall  present classroom teachers with effective tools for strengthening phonics and spelling skills that encourage students to move beyond learning and into a world of word discovery. Each research-based volume includes a wealth of friendly, hands-on, manipulative activities that guide teachers in teaching the development of words–from phonemic awareness to spelling.

In Making Words Fourth Grade, Pat and Dottie introduce 4th grade teachers to 50 lessons that teach all the prefixes, suffixes, and root skills included in most fourth grade curriculums. Each Making Words activity leads children through a systematic and sequential spelling curriculum. All lessons include practice with prefixes and suffixes as children stretch out words they are making and blend the letters to make new words. Because teaching children letter-sound relationships is easier than teaching children to actually use these letter-sound relationships, all lessons include a transfer step in which children apply the sounds they are learning to spelling new words. 

Making Words Fourth Grade is the best resource you can have on hand for motivating your students to learn words!  

Introduction    1

Lesson 1   l    fireplaces    000

Lesson Focus:     rhyming patterns ape, ace, ice

re, meaning back or again

Lesson 2   l    treasures    000

Lesson Focus:     rhyming patterns at, eat, ate, ue

er/est, meaning more/most

re, meaning back or again

Lesson 3   l    rattlesnake    000

Lesson Focus:     rhyming patterns eat, east, ake

er/est, meaning more/most

Lesson 4   l    teachers/cheaters (2 secret words)

Lesson Focus:     rhyming patterns eat, each

er, meaning person or thing

re, meaning back or again

Lesson 5   l    fireworks

Lesson Focus:     rhyming patterns ir, ire, ise, isk

er, meaning more

er, meaning person or thing

re, meaning back or again

Lesson 6   l    workbench

Lesson Focus:     rhyming patterns oke, eck, ench

er, meaning person or thing

en, changing part of speech

Lesson 7   l    repainted    000

Lesson Focus:     rhyming patterns aid, ied, ain

er, meaning person or thing

re, meaning back or again

Lesson 8   l    unpleasant    000

Lesson Focus:     rhyming patterns at, ast, ent, est, eal

un, meaning not or opposite

Lesson 9   l    friendly    000

Lesson Focus:     rhyming patterns y, ine, ield

er, meaning person or thing

ly, changing part of speech

Lesson 10 l    perfectly    000

Lesson Focus:     rhyming patterns y, ee, eel

re, meaning back or again

ly, changing part of speech

y, changing part of speech

Lesson 11 l    playground    000

Lesson Focus:     rhyming patterns ay, oad, oud, ound

un, meaning not or opposite

ly, changing part of speech

Lesson 12 l &n

Patricia M. Cunningham – Dorothy P. Hall

Making Words Fourth Grade: 50 Hands-On Lessons for Teaching Prefixes, Suffixes, and Roots, 1/e

Based on the best-selling book Phonics They Use: Words for Reading and Writing, this new grade level series offers a fresh pairing of lessons and activities for kindergarten through fifth grade. In Making Words Fourth Grade, Pat and Dottie introduce teachers to 50 Making Words lessons that cover key literacy skills included in most fourth-grade curricula. The activities progress through a systematic process that includes ample practice manipulating letters to make words, sorting words, and using prefixes, suffixes, and roots to explore patterns in related or rhyming words–skills all fourth-grade readers need. Each lesson includes 15-20 words including a secret word that can be made with all the letters. After students gain experience working with prefixes, suffixes and roots, all lessons include a transfer step to help them apply what they learn to the spelling of new words.

“I love the fact that [this book] builds on root words, prefixes, and suffixes. If students can learn this, they will be better spellers and better readers  … this word work will help them decipher vocabulary words too!”  –Cheryl Dick, Nixa School District, Nixa, Missouri

 “I enjoy teaching Making Words lessons almost as much as my children love participating in them!”  –Amy Martindale Kelly, Grantham School, Goldsboro, North Carolina

Patricia M. Cunningham is the author of Beyond Retelling, Classrooms That Work, Schools That Work, and Phonics They Use, all published by Allyn & Bacon, as well as a professor of education at Wake Forest University. She has over 30 years of experience in various elementary grades and with remedial reading and has served as a curriculum coordinator and director of reading. Pat promotes literacy for all children through her Four Blocks® workshops and staff development sessions with educators.

Dorothy P. Hall is the co-developer of the Four Blocks® framework and the director of the Four Blocks® Center at Wake Forest University. A former elementary teacher and education professor, she also presents workshops around the country on Four Blocks®, Building Blocks, guided reading strategies, and phonics instruction.

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