Word chains are a really useful teaching tool with beginner readers. This short activity allows children to practice the skills underpinning reading: blending, segmenting and phoneme manipulation (adding sounds, deleting sound and changing sounds in words). We have created some free word chains for you to try out with your learners.
How to use word chains:
- Place the letters needed for the word chain activity in on a white board
- Ask the learner to build the first word in the word chain, e.g, ‘mat’
- Ask the learner to blend and read the word
- Now ask the learner to change the word to the next word in the chain, e.g. ‘change the word to ‘man’’
- Ask the learner to identify where the change has occurred
- Ask the learner to make the change, blend and read this word.
- Repeat with the next word
