Sarah's Teaching Snippets - K-2 Science of Reading Educational Resources

1 week ago

Word chains are a flexible, powerful routine for building decoding, spelling, and word recognition it’s important to remember that as readers grow, word chains can grow with them.

Early on, word chains help students attend to small sound changes. They’re practicing phonemic awareness and learning that changing one sound changes the word.

As students develop, word chains shift. Now students must think about spelling patterns and orthographic rules, not just sounds. They’re holding multiple options in mind and choosing the spelling that fits the word and position.

Word chains can extend into morphemes. Students aren’t just swapping letters here. They’re adding, removing, or shifting meaningful word parts. The work moves from “What sound changed?” to “What part of the word changed, and how did the meaning change?” The example I used in my slide is a more advanced example but this can as simple as change helps to helped to helper to helpful to unhelpful.

Same routine.

Different demands.

Deeper thinking.

When we let word chains evolve, we keep the structure students know while intentionally increasing the cognitive load and supporting growth from sounds, to spelling, to meaning.

And when we add pictures or meaning clues?

We anchor the work in vocabulary and oral language, guiding students toward the next word while keeping the focus on precise changes.

Comment “chain” for links to a blog post about word chains and resource.

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Sarah's First Grade Snippets

2 weeks ago

Today we honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and it feels like the perfect time to pause on a powerful word family built from the base <equ> meaning equal, same, level.

These words all connect back to the same idea but are slightly different from each other.

✨Equal means the same amount.

✨Equally describes how something is shared.

✨Equality is the state of being treated the same.

✨Equivalent means the same value.

✨Equity reminds us that fairness doesn’t always mean identical. It means balanced and just.

✨Unequal and inequality describe what happens when fairness or balance is missing.

Across subjects, the meaning stays connected:

 The equator divides Earth into two equal halves.

 An equinox is when day and night are nearly equal.

 An equilateral triangle has all sides equal in length.

 Equilibrium is a state of balance, when forces are equal.

 Something adequate is equal to what is needed , just enough.

It’s fun to see how words connect!

This is one of our free monthly resources included in our @logosliteracyacademy membership (and anyone who has already bought one of the courses also can grab these!)

Comment “LOGOS” if you’re interested in learning about our courses or our membership.

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Sarah's First Grade Snippets

3 weeks ago

Swipe to see how to use this free resource and how it can help our readers!

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Sarah's First Grade Snippets

3 weeks ago

Decodable sentences scramblers are one of my go-to activities. There is so much you can do them! This activity is packed with opportunities for decoding practice, fluency, comprehension, and grammar.

I have sets of sentence scramblers focusing on different phonics skills.

Comment “scramble” and I’ll send you the link.

www.teacherspayteachers.com/store/sarah-paul-362/category-decodable-sentence-scramble-335545

Want to learn more? Read this blog post:

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Sarah's First Grade Snippets

11 months ago

🔎 Breaking Down the Word "Education"! 🧠✨

Let's take a look at how this word is built.

📢 Sounds: The pronunciation of "education" isn’t as straightforward as it looks! The schwa /ə/ appears multiple times, and the "t" is pronounced like /sh/—a great example of how English words shift in spoken form.

🔤 Graphemes: Graphemes spell sounds. They can be made up of one or more letters.

🗣️ Syllables: Syllables have to do with how we pronounce a word. when we say "education", we break it up like this: ed-u-ca-tion. Syllables revolve around vowel sounds and each syllable has one vowel sound.

🔍 Morphemes: Morphemes are the smallest unit of meaning.

e- (prefix) = "out" (assimilated from ex-)

duce (base) = "to lead"

-ate (verbal suffix) = "to make, cause"

-ion (noun suffix) = "state, act, result of"

So education literally means "the act of leading out"—a beautiful way to think about learning! 💡

🧐 Etymology & Relatives:

Rooted in the Latin verb ducere ("to lead"), "education" is connected to words like induce, deduce, introduce, conduct, and reduction—all related to movement and guidance!

📚 Teaching morphology helps students understand words deeply, making spelling, reading, and vocabulary stronger! How do you incorporate word study in your classroom? Drop your thoughts below! 👇

Interested in learning more? Check out my blog post about morphology! Comment BLOG if you'd like the link.

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