Education Tools for 6th – 8th Graders

These exercises are designed

to help you build your VOCABULARY.

Please write all of your work in your

Vocabulary Building Notebook.

SPELLING ASSIGNMENTS

MONDAY – Write definitions of each word.

TUESDAY – Write each word 5 times.

WEDNESDAY – Write a sentence for each word.

THURSDAY – Write each word 5 times.

FRIDAY – Spelling quiz.

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Word Families

Word families are groups of words that have a common feature or pattern – they have some of the same combinations of letters in them and a similar sound. For example, at, cat, hat, and fat are a family of words with the “at” sound and letter combination in common.

The 37 most common word families in English (according to Wylie and Durrell) are: ack, ain, ake, ale, all, ame, an, ank, ap, ash, at, ate, aw ay, eat, ell, est, ice, ick, ide, ight, ill, in, ine, ing, ink, ip, it, ock, oke, op, ore, ot, uck ,ug, ump, unk.

Many of the nursery rhymes contain common word families. You can use these rhymes to teach these letter combinations (and how they are spelled and spoken), having the students sound them out after memorizing the rhyme. You can study one word family a week. Students can use the Little Explorers Picture Dictionary to look for more words that belong to word families.

The website has a list of the most common word families in English (from Wylie and Durrell, 1970, plus a few other word families) and exemplars of each.