Accuracy Mini-Lesson

I have focused a lot on what I teach in the Comprehension mini-lessons of the CAFÉ. Here is a mini-lesson I use for the Accuracy part of CAFÉ. I use word family cards from Cherry Carl’s website. This week we had focused on short u as our phonics sound. Each day I have a quick short u word family sort like this one. I also have PowerPoints, poems, etc. that have short u instead of a specific short u word family.

On Fridays I use a few cards from each of the short u word families from the week in a slightly different way. The kids LOVE this activity. I’ll take 2-3 picture and word cards from each of the sorts and mix them up. Then I pass 1 card out to every student and tell them not to show anyone. When I start the music they have to go around the room and find their partner without talking. As soon as they have found their partner they sit down right where they are. Once I see all of them have found their match and are sitting I stop the music and let them know how long it took them. If I hear any talking I add 5 seconds to the time. They love to see how fast they can partner up and try to beat that time the next week. Then I have each partner group say their cards and we put them back on the board until we have reviewed each of the word families. This is a very engaging way to get them to focus on the phonics strategy before we have a spelling test.




Speaking of spelling tests…we don’t tell our students a list of 10 words and have them memorize those words for the week. We give them a rule – like short u – with a few examples on the newsletter. Then we do activities like the whole group word sorts, individual word work activities, etc. to go along with that rule. The spelling test is a ‘cold’ test since they don’t know the words ahead of time. We make sure they are easily phonetically sounded and spelled out. That has helped make sure they aren’t focusing on a few words but really internalizing a spelling rule. This really transfers over to their writing because they are used to stretching out words and spelling them using a rule. It takes a little more to explain this to the parents at the beginning of the year, but I think it is well worth the effort because of the results.









Here is the website I get my word family cards from:




http://www.wordway.us.com/




Scroll to the bottom of the page for the free word family resources.




http://www.wordway.us.com/FamilySets/Toonsub.pdf




(ub family set – used in description below)




It has change over the years so you’ll need to look around. You can purchase CD’s with all her stuff of get some of it for free (that’s what I did). If you go to the link specifically for the short u word family and look at the PDF I’ll explain how I use certain parts of it.




The cards of pg. 26-30 of the PDF are the picture and word cards like I used in the video. I don’t use all of them…I choose the ones I really want to focus on so the lesson doesn’t get too long. Then during word work the students might use pg. 10 of the PDF to put the words in ABC order. After we have done a word family sort together whole group then I will have morning work to review it the next day.



I level the morning work – pg. 5 would be a cut a paste and I make sure all the words on that paper were done in the whole group lesson the day before. This is the level I use for my struggling readers.




For my average readers I can use pg. 6. In this page the students have to decide if the word fits the word family or not. If it does fit the word family then they finish writing the word. They x it out if it does not belong to the word family.




For my higher readers I use pg. 9 of the PDF. This is where they see the picture and have to use the word family to write the correct word. By leveling the work I am making sure that I have introduced the same phonics rule to all my students, but changed my expectation of what they need to do to show me they understand it.









I hope this gives you some ideas of what you can do for your accuracy mini-lessons, leveling work, spelling and phonics rules. There are lots of awesome resources out there like Cherry Carl’s website…you just have to find them.