Hi Ray,
While the term word family is sometimes used to describe a base word and all of its available affixes (e.g., read, reads, reading, readable, unreadable) or words that share an etymological origin (e.g., muscle and muscular; two and twin), I’m assuming by context that you are referring to the “families” that relate words by ending with the same vowel and consonant graphemes (known as a rime, e.g., cat, bat, mat).
While these types of lists aren’t inherently bad, you are right to express some caution over heavy use of them. Firstly, we want to make sure that we are avoiding using word families before students have been taught the letter-sound correspondences for all used graphemes. We don’t want to use families in such a way that encourages the repeated rime to be memorized as a unit.
Word families can, however, be used to support repeated practice of learned phonics patterns. Providing multiple repeated exposures to these frequently used word endings can help support pattern recognition for students, especially those with reading difficulties. This pattern recognition from exposure is essential for supporting word reading automaticity as students transition away from the more effortful, slower, sound-by-sound blending.
It’s important to acknowledge that reading lists of words from the same rime family is a highly scaffolded path to reading, so practice with word families should be exchanged for more varied practice when students are able. For example, a similar activity can be structured with word chains: lists that- like word families- only vary one letter at a time, but it isn’t always the first letter. Word chains might use a sequence of words such as log-dog-dig-dip. Word chains may also refer to a sequence of words with minimal contrasts- including those that add or omit a letter at a time. Meaning, word chains may also look like: log, lag, flag, flap, flip, lip, lips.
By trading word families for word chains, teachers support students practicing both phonics and phoneme blending without encouraging students to memorize letter combinations or encouraging bad habits such as only looking at the first letter and assuming/guessing the rest of the word.
Without seeing the routine you are currently using, it’s hard to say whether this is a matter of “updating” versus replacing your current practice. If the phonics program you are using treats onset-rime patterns as students’ primary phonics/decoding strategy, rather than a temporary scaffold to use as practice, then it would probably be best to find an alternate curriculum. But if it otherwise follows an explicit, cumulative phonics sequence, and your question stems more from wanting students to have additional, more challenging ways to practice their learned letter-sound patterns, we can do that.
One idea is to take a hand at editing the word families your program provides. Add or change the presented words to make the list a word chain, rather than a family solely of matched vowel-consonant endings. Use letters that students have already been introduced to as review, while emphasizing the newest letter with the most repetition.
These lists can be used for more than decoding practice. Students can encode these words as well. Although letter formation is an important part of encoding, word chains lend themselves to spelling using letter tiles (such as magnetic letters or small squares of individual letters). Students spell the initial word presented to them, and change one letter at a time as the new word is read. The use of letter tiles allows for efficient practice of several words, while the minimal contrasts support students’ phonemic awareness as they determine which of the sounds is the same and which one needs to be exchanged.
As soon as they are able, students should practice these concepts in the context of sentences and short texts. And hopefully it goes without saying the importance of providing students access to the rich language found in authentic texts from trade books as well.
I hope this helps get you started! You might also want to check out the activity descriptions we have to support students’ Alphabet Knowledge, Decoding, and Encoding/Spelling for additional ideas to support your students’ learning!
