READING RESOURCE: word families

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Why Reading by Word Families Works

One of the reasons I’ve personally noticed that word family chunks work better is that many times the letter that follows the vowel dictates how the vowel sounds.  For example, in the words pan, paw, and pat, the a‘s all make a different sound; based on the letter that follows the a.  Teaching a child to read through the vowel first, then add on the last sound can be counterproductive and lead to confusion.  This is why I like to teach children to find the word family chunks when reading new words.

Here are a few more reasons reading researchers are word family “crazy”:

• the division of words into initial letters (onset) and rime is psychologically easier; for example, it’s easier and quicker for a child to change pat to cat or hat than it is to change pat to pan or pad.
• rimes are very phonetically reliable or stable
• making rhyming words is one of the earliest phonological skills and teaching by rime accompanies this skill nicely
• the brain works as a pattern detector, looking to chunk new words into pieces, so learning words by chunk works with, not against, the brain’s natural tendencies
• teaching by rime is the basis for learning how to read by analogy (refer to the pattern decoder reason above)
• introducing words by word family allows for new words to be introduced and learned more rapidly and easily
• rimes are the basis for syllable chunks that make up multisyllabic words; for example,hippopotamus is made up of four basic rimes (-ip, -o, -ot, and -us)
• just from the following set of 37 common rimes, nearly 500 primary words can be made!

-ack	-all	-ain	-ake	-ale
-ame	-an	-ank	-ap	-ash
-at	-ate	-aw	-ay	-eat
-ell	-est	-ice	-ick	-ide
-ight	-ill	-in	-ine	-ing
-ink	-ip	-it	-ock	-oke
-op	-ore	-or	-uck	-ug
-ump	-unk

I love how Francine Johnston gives the mama (or teacher) more guidance when teaching word families in her section: How Should We Study Word Families in a Developmental Fashion?

She suggests doing it this way…

1. Start with one word family at a time (for example, -at)
2. Begin comparing word families with the same vowel (-at, -an, -ag)
3. Move on to comparing rimes with different short vowels (-at, -it).

Resources: (all of these resources reference other leading researchers in the field, from years ago until today’s researchers)

• Phonics They Use (Pat Cunningham)
• Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning about Print (Marilyn Jager Adams)
• The Reading Teacher, The Timing and Teaching of Word Families (Dr. Francine Johnston)
• Words Their Way (Bear, et. al)

So, there’s a lot to be said for word families.  They are the foundation for reading and writing new and bigger words and give our young learners decoding/spelling strategies to tackle those words.