Eye Spy: Baseword Bottles

Thinking maps just make sense to me and to my students. I use them alot across the curriculum.

Here is a quick idea for using a bracemap to reinforce the important reading skill of identifying basewords and prefixes and suffixes. This is a skill we are currently working on as part of lit stations. I just filled an empty bottle with rice and added word cards. Students take a bottle and search and find a word to record on the recording sheet. Then they use a bracemap to break the word into its parts: the baseword and the suffix or prefix.


When the student records the two parts they need to be sure that they record the whole word. A good example would be the word, GIVING the two parts would be GIVE and ING not GIV and ING. The student response will help you gauge whether or not the student has a solid understanding of what a baseword is and how the e drop rule is applied for this word.

I've used this same idea and have made contraction bottles and compound word bottles. The bracemap works the same way. They record the whole word first and then break the word into its parts.

Here is a recording sheet for the baseword bottles if interested.

Base Word Bottles

I've been fighting a cold all week so I'm going to go crawl onto the couch and watch some mindless tv to end my Friday. That sounds pretty heavenly to me right about now.

Yes, week + end means one tired but happy teacher!
Hope your week went well!