Kindergarten · Reading · RF.K.2.A
Word Families Lesson Plan for Kindergarten
A ready-to-teach word families lesson for Kindergarten, built around the at, an, ig, og and un word families, sorting pictures by ending, matching rhymes, and building words with wheels and flip books. Print the plan, print the practice pages, and you are set.
Approximately 47 minutes
Learning objective
- Read and trace at, an, ig, og and un words
- Sort pictures by their word family ending
- Build new words by changing the first letter
Materials
- Read, Trace and Color the At Family
- Read, Trace and Color the An Family
- Read, Trace and Color the Ig Family
- Read, Trace and Color the Og Family
- Read, Trace and Color the Un Family
- At or An Picture Sort
- Pencils, and whiteboard space for the modeled examples
Lesson steps
1. Build the background (5 min)
Introduce word families in plain language and connect it to a book the class already knows. Write the key term where students can see it all lesson. For Kindergarten, one clear sentence beats a full definition.
2. Read aloud and think aloud (I do) (10 min)
Read a short passage aloud. Stop twice and narrate your own thinking about word families: what you noticed in the text and what made you notice it. Students are learning the move, not the answer.
3. Guided practice (we do) (12 min)
Read a second passage together. This time students find the evidence and you record it. Push every answer back to the text with "what words told you that?"
4. Independent practice (you do) (15 min)
Hand out "Read, Trace and Color the At Family". Students read and answer on their own. Circulate and ask individuals to point to the line in the text that supports their answer.
5. Share and close (5 min)
Two or three students share an answer and the evidence behind it. Restate word families one final time in the students' own words, not yours.
Check for understanding
Ask each student to point to the evidence in the text for one of their answers. A student who has the right answer but cannot find the line has not yet learned word families.
Differentiation
Extra support. Students who stall: pull them into a small group and rebuild word families with concrete materials or a simpler text before asking for the written work again. Do not send the page home as homework, it will just rehearse the misunderstanding.
Extension. Students who finish early: ask them to write their own word families problem for a partner to solve, then check the partner's work. Creating a problem is harder than solving one and it surfaces whether they really understand word families.
Skills covered in this lesson
Word families practice
