Word Families: Read the Words and Circle the One That Names the Picture

Nothing is written on this 1st grade word families read-and-circle page; the pencil only circles. The two-row carpet at the top is the same as on the read-and-write sheet — can, fan, pan, van, swan and bat, cat, hat, mat, sat on the -an and -at version shown — with a dashed circle to tick after each row is read. Below it, six cards show a picture (a bat, a pan, a cat, a fan, a hat, a van) over a stack of three word pills, the beginning of each word in dark ink and the ending in coral. Two of the three pills come from the same row of the carpet as the answer, so hat sits with sat and bat under the bat, and the child circles the one word that names the picture.

Recognition before production: this is the step before the child has to spell an onset, and it tests whether they can tell can from fan when both are in front of them. Drawing the foils from the same family is deliberate. A child who only reads the coral ending sees three words that all end the same and cannot choose; the choice has to be made on the first letter or two, which is exactly the discrimination the carpet was drilling.

It prints on one portrait sheet and takes a few minutes. Use it on the day the family is introduced, then the read-and-write page once the words are recognized. The color-the-carpet page for the same families is the fluency stretch, and word families with blends is the harder onset.