Word Hunting!!

A-hunting we will go this week for two of the most common vowel patterns that kids will encounter! Word hunts are right up there with word sorts when it comes to teaching phonics and word study elements in a way that gives kids a chance to be active word solvers!

This week, I want to try a word hunt that will hopefully help folks to feel more comfortable in teaching vowel patterns. Let's start by watching a hilarious video that appeared on the Electric Company on the silent "e."



You might recognize the silent e from other words:

like
bike
gave
name

An abbreviated form of these words that you'll see in your curriculum/standards is this:
CVCe pattern (which stands for consonant, vowel, consonant, silent "e").

(Yes, they are also called split vowel digraphs, if you've read this week's Assignments and Commentary already or if you remember this from Chapter 5.)

What I want you to do this week is hunt for words that fit this CVCe pattern. You can hunt for these words in anything you're reading at the moment. You can hunt for CVCe words in People magazine, your phonics textbook, The Hunger Games, or espn.com! Whatever you're reading will work! Try to hunt down at least 15-20 of them and post them on your blog -- and let us know what you're reading these days!

After you've found 20 CVCe words, see if you can find one-syllable CVC words without the silent "e."

Examples of CVC words from the video are fat (consonant-vowel-consonant) and glob (consonant-vowel-consonant with the l-o-b). Hunt for 15-20 of these as well. Make sure to post your words on your blog.

And then tell us what you noticed about the words you found! What do you notice about the vowel sounds in CVC words? How about CVCe words? What makes them different?

Finally, report back what you thought about going word hunting. Do you think students might like this activity? Was it easy/hard? How might you use this with your students?

P.S. Here's the old school version of the silent "e" segment on Electric Company, in case anyone is interested! (Yes, that is Bill Cosby!)