Word Work for Big Kids - Syllables & Rhyming

Sometimes it’s hard to find word work for older kids. This one involves syllables, and I’ll share another one later in this same post about rhyming. It’s a great way to reinforce concepts taught at previous grades and get a good review in.

First up in our word work for older kids – students created a list of words based on syllables. They had to write a one, then two, then three, four, and finally five syllable word. They worked in teams. You would think this would be incredibly simple for my older elementary students – but it wasn’t! We had our share of mistakes, but that was ok because I sent the students on the lookout for them. So it worked out alright. 🙂

The next word work for older kids was one where the students got to sit at on their desks. {Those are their favorite!}

For this activity each student started with a whiteboard at their seat. They they wrote down one word that they knew had a lot of rhymes. When they had written one word, they passed the board to the next person. That person wrote a word and passed the board. This continued until everyone had written a rhyming word for the original word. No nonsense words allowed!

After that first round, the students started with a different word. The catch here to make it more challenging – the students couldn’t write the same word twice! So by the end we were getting harder and harder words. {The pictures don’t seem to capture that, but as the words got increasingly difficult – I took less pictures.}