Word Recognition Interventions

On this page, you'll learn about an implicit method of teaching decoding, called word families, which involves studying word patterns rather than sounding out words.

A word family is a group of words that have a common pattern or combination of letters that produce the same sound. For example, the –at word family contains bat, cat, fat, hat, and so on. Word families can be a useful strategy in teaching students to recognize words. But first, a word of caution: word families should be a supplemental strategy to phonics instruction. O'Connor (2014) writes, “The problem for poor readers who practice word families as the dominant approach to reading is that they may fail to notice the sequence of letters in the list of words. Instead, they overgeneralize auditory rhyming as an effective strategy for reading." He recommends “that teachers teach letter-by-letter decoding… as [struggling] students’ first reading strategy,” (p. 64), as well as prompting students to recognize the individual letter sequence when working with word families. 

As is the case in all the decoding activities you've learned about, it is important to remember that students need multiple opportunities to practice applying these strategies in connected text at their instructional level! This page includes intervention strategies that you can use to support your student's ability in this area. As you read, consider which of these interventions best aligns with your students' strengths and needs in the whole learner domains. 

Explicit Instruction

To support your students' understanding of word families, you should start by explicitly teaching this concept. After students learn what word families are, they will be able to apply this strategy in the future, so there is no need to explicitly teach this concept every time you introduce a new word family. Explicit instruction when you first introduce word families sounds like:

Explain the Skill/Concept. Define word families and explain the activity ("Word families are words that all have the same rime, or ending sound." "Today we are going to be learning words in the -ack word family.")
Model Skill with Examples. Model reading words in the same family. ("When I read words in the same family, I notice that they sound and are spelled the same at the end. Let's try these two words—back and pack. I notice that they are in the same word family because they sound and are spelled the same at the end.").
Model Skill with Non-Examples. Model reading words in two families. ("Listen when I read these words. back and fan. Do they sound and are they spelled the same at the end? No, so they must be in different word families."). 
Practice the Skill. Engage in the activity below to practice the skill with your student, providing feedback as necessary. ("Now you try. I'm going to ask you to read words in the same family.")

Activity A: Onset Rime

The skill of onset rime requires students to blend the onset beginning consonant(s) with the rime that follows (i.e., the vowel and subsequent letters). Show the student a rime (-ack). Then, show them onsets, and have them read each onset with the rime so that they are reading words in the same family. "We're going to practice with the -ack word family. I'm going to put a beginning sound down, and you'll say the beginning sound, the family, and the whole word. Back. Black. Sack." 

Onset Rime in Action

Watch this clip to see how to execute Onset Rime. Notice how the teacher models several variations of teaching word families using Onset Rime. 

Activity B: Glass Analysis

Glass Analysis is another strategy for teaching word families. It's meant to be implemented within ten minutes and at a quick, rapid-fire pace. The teacher begins by presenting the student with a word family, such as -at. There are three basic questions that the teacher asks throughout the drill as she changes the word by adding letter(s) and/or affixes:

• "What letter(s) make(s) the ____ sound?" (e.g., "This word is cat. What letters make the -at sound?")
• "What sound does ____ make?" (e.g., "This word is cat. What sound does c make?")
• "If I take off ____ what sound is left?" (e.g., "This word is chatter. If I take off chat, what sound is left?")

The teacher then checks the student's word recognition by asking "The whole word is ____?"

Click here for resources to use when implementing Glass Analysis. 

Glass Analysis in Action

Watch this clip to see Erin Larkin-Maguire model how to execute Glass Analysis.

Glass Analysis.(n.d.). Copyright at Relay GSE. New York, NY: Relay Graduate School of Education. 

Word building is an implicit strategy that students can use to recognize and learn new words that share the same root. In this activity, students use graphic organizers, such as word webs, to write alternate forms of the root word.

Explicit Instruction

To support your students' understanding word building, you should start by explicitly teaching this concept. This sounds like:

Explain the Skill/Concept. Define blending word building and explain the activity. ("Word building means that we will learn one root word and brainstorm other words that share this root by adding affixes." "Today we'll be using a word web to brainstorm new words." )
Model Skill with Examples. Think aloud about how you use a word web. ("First, I will start by putting my root word, identify, at the top. Next, I'll write variations of that word underneath.")
Model Skill with Non-Examples. Think aloud about how you identify when you've made an error ("I've written some of the words I can think of  using the root identify. After I brainstorm all of my words, I'll go back and make sure they are real words. I noticed that I've written an incorrect word, indentififiable. I'll change this to identifiable.") 
Practice the Skill. Engage in the activity below to practice the skill with your student, providing feedback as necessary. ("Now you try using a word web with the word 'identify.'")

Activity C: Word Webs

The following strategy is sourced from O'Connor, R. (2014). Teaching word recognition: Effective strategies for students with learning difficulties (2nd ed.). New York: Guilford Press.

As students learn a range of affixes, they will need to practice recognizing them easily within words and determining how they influence a word's meaning. One effective way to practice variations based on morphemes is through word webs (Bos et al., 2000), in which children use a list of learned morphemes and group discussion to generate a range of potential variations around a base word. Children could start with a familiar word, such as color, and build inflected forms (colors, colored, coloring) and forms with different meanings by switching morphemes, along with varying inflected forms (recolor, recoloring, recolored, colorful, colorfulness, colorless, colorlessness, colorist, discolor, discolored, etc.). Students enjoy discovering how large they can build a small familiar word, and then practice makes it easier to unlock word parts in the other words they may encounter when they do not have the support of the small group brainstorming. 

Last, the teacher leads the students through reading each cluster of words they created. By expanding on forms of a word, students gain experience adding and removing affixes, which will help them read and spell words. 

Word Webs in Action

Teacher: "We are going to try a word web strategy with the word 'identify.' Go ahead and start building your web, adding prefixes and suffixes to the words. I'll give you 5 minutes." (Waits 5 minutes.) "Now, let's read through those words and see what affixes you've added, and let's check to make sure we take out any words that aren't real."

Student reads all words in the Word Web below, and then says: "I wrote the word identififiable. I think I need to change this to identifiable." 

O'Connor, R. (2014). Teaching word recognition: Effective strategies for students with learning difficulties (2nd ed.). New York: Guilford Press.
Word Web.(n.d.). Copyright at Relay GSE. New York, NY:  Relay Graduate School of Education. 

Think about the following scenario, which takes place after a teacher has explicitly taught word families and given students the opportunity to practice: 
     Teacher: [Holds up the word 'clamp'] "Which word family?" 
     Student: "Lamp" 

In such a case, what might you do? 

When you are planning your lessons, you should anticipate that your student will make errors throughout. Here is a series of prompts that you can use to respond to errors. Keep in mind that all students are different, and that students might respond better to some types of feedback than others.

If your student struggles to meet your objective, there are various techniques that you might try, to adjust the activity to your student's needs.