Compound Words

Pancake Chefs!
This week we had so much fun learning about compound words.  How can it not be a good week when there are pancakes involved?!

Last week we worked with CVC words so the next step in our Ortan Gillingham phonics instruction is to read and spell compound words made up of two CVC words like sunset, pigpen, upset, etc.  I like to make sure I teach those compound words, but also expose them to compound words like pancake, butterfly, cupcake etc even though we haven't yet taught those more complex sounds.  And of course we do have several students who are able to decode those more complex compound words, so it makes it easy to differentiate these lessons.

I was browsing through my own kids' books and came across a few books with pancake in the title and it got be started on the whole pancake theme!

The first thing we did was create our chef hats.  (I have been making these for a few years ever since I saw the idea on The First Grade Parade.  The kids always love them!)  They are very easy to make.  I wrote "Chef" and each student's name on a white sentence strip.  Then I gave them a few minutes to decorate them.  I did this at the end of the day during my IE time.  The kids were happy decorating their soon to be hats as I pulled individuals for intervention (no instruction time wasted:).  They went home already excited about the next day's lesson!  After school, I simply took one sheet of white tissue and staple it around the hat.  It kind of puffs out naturally and transforms into a chef hat.

When they came in the next morning, they grabbed their chef hats and we gathered on the carpet.  I told them that sometimes we do something really fun like being pancake chefs because it helps us remember what we are learning.  I told them that the word pancake is a special type of word called a compound word.  I explained that a compound word is two words joined together to make a new word.  We talked about the words in pancake.  I wrote a few other words on the board (both the CVC/CVC and more complex ones) and then briefly talked about our learning goal and wrote in on the board.

I read If You Give a Pig a Pancake and we made predictions before and during the story.  Then I asked students to tell me if they heard any compound words in the story.  As they told me each one, I help up the word on a pancake and we read it together.

Each student then was allowed to choose a mini pancake with a compound word to create a recipe card.

As students finished one, they were asking to do another one, so I thought that was a good sign!

Then we moved into our center routine.  I met with each student in a small group to practice reading compound words on pancakes.  To make it fun, I gave them each a pancake flipper and when they read correctly, they could flip their pancake.  Wow, I had some motivated little readers!!!  I don't post pictures of my students' faces, but oh how I wish I could.  (I post pictures on our parent blog and I have so many great ones of concentrating readers and big smiles as they flipped their pancakes!)  Their excitement was contagious. I was so happy because when I plan lessons like this and am spending my evenings doing things like cutting out laminated pancakes and making a trip to the dollar store for pancake flippers, I never know if it will be worth all the effort.  You just never know for sure how they will react.  But this was worth every moment of my time.  For 3 of my groups we focused on reading the CVC/CVC compound words and with my enrichment group we also read the more complex compound words.

The next day we met as a whole class and reviewed what we knew about compound words.  We created an anchor chart.  (I planned on drawing my pancake stack ahead of time, but ran out of time so please don't mock my obvious artistic talent!)  

It looks better in person. Really.

Then we broke into small groups with the goal of writing CVC/CVC compound words.  I first had them use a dry-erase marker to divide the compound word into its two smaller words and read to review what we worked on yesterday (and to use the pancake flippers again:)  

For writing, we would say the word and pound (lightly!) the 2 words.  Then we would pound the first words and segment the sounds (putting a finger up for each one).  They would write the first word and then do same for second word.  

It went really well and even my enrichment group really needed the direct instruction and guided practice in tapping out the sounds and writing the compound words.  Their confidence certainly went up when they saw the big words they were writing!

I read the Pancakes, Pancakes book by Eric Carle and Curious George Makes Pancakes to lead into the "How To" informative writing piece that I thought fit right in with our chef theme.  They had to choose a food/meal/snack that they knew how to make.  I modeled with How To Make Pancakes of course!  This page from the Curious George anchored the lesson.  How perfect is it with those transition words?!

I think that they really enjoyed that they weren't just writing all on one page.  They liked that they were making their own book.  I liked the freedom of not giving them a definite number of steps.  I was prepared with suggestions for the students who would say they don't know how to make anything: peanut butter and jelly, ice cream sundae, popcorn, cereal. etc.  It didn't take long for them all to have something they were excited to write about.  

And I just couldn't resist bringing them in some pancakes to enjoy as they finished their informative pieces on the second day.  They were so appreciative!!  (Again, wish I could show their sweet faces enjoying their treat!) 

Here is the link to my TPT store for these these materials.  And now that it is officially fall, it's apple time!!!  This morning I ventured to my favorite orchard.  I took my two boys to pick some apples for next week's follow-up informative piece on making applesauce and picked up a couple more apple themed books to add to my collection.  Happy Fall!!!