Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Word Work Station: Cup Stacking

So here's a word work station that can help your students practice making/spelling words. You can design it to meet the needs of students in your classroom. I anticipate many of my students needing practice in the within word stage so I plan on using these patterns for this station but you could certainly create this with simple letter name patterns too.

This is what you need: Sharpies, labels and some small plastic cups.....super simple!!
The plastic cups need to be of the see through variety. I found these small 3 oz. orange see through cups at Target.


Next I wrote consonant beginnings, digraphs or blends on the labels, cut and stuck them on some cups.


Then I programmed another set of cups with word parts that we will focus on.
When students go to this station, they will take a beginning and add it to a word part to create a word. The beginning letter or letters cup goes right over top of the word part to create the full word.


I would have students record words that they made on a sheet of paper so I can check their thinking.

This cup game works with prefixes and base words too! How about addition/subtraction facts and sums/differences? Lots of possibilities with just a stack of cups and some labels!






























Sunday, July 10, 2011

Magnet Boards

I've had to get creative on where to place my math and word work magnet stations. I resorted to sticking cookie sheets onto my cabinet doors for my math station. Works great!



My word work magnet station is the back of this metal bookshelf. These are wooden magnets from the dollar store. They have held up for three years now, just wish they weren't all capital letters. Kids come here to do look, cover, spell, check with spelling words or no excuse words.