classroom visual resources
a selection of classroom visual resources to support your word study
Morphology Matters
FREE – A List of Affixes
Phonics Fundamentals
FREE – Tuning In Alphabet Chart
Grapheme Card Sets
The Getting Started Graphemes Chart Set
The Comprehensive Graphemes Reference Chart Set
Orthography Intertwined
FREE – Making Morphology Visible & Attesting Affixes
Homophones Game
Grapheme & Affix Tiles
Institutional Licenses are available for all of our classroom visual resources at heavily discounted rates.
Please email fiona@wordtorque.com directly to find out more information.
The Big Picture
FREE – Word Inquiry Charts
These free downloadable Word Inquiry charts are intended to support your word study with students.
The Three influences on English Orthography chart shows the interrelationship between phonology, morphology and etymology. The choice of letters used to spell words is influenced by the link with speech sounds, the need to show connections with other related words (the spelling of the base remains consistent), and the history of words.
The Word Inquiry Process chart outlines the steps we take to guide investigations into our orthography, noting the place of explicit teaching and practice. Involving students in questioning, hypothesizing and testing builds their critical thinking skills and allows them a routine they can apply beyond the classroom. There are more specific cards available for purchase that build on this anchor chart.
The Word Noticers and Word Knowers chart shows a cycle that supports our students in growing their knowledge of words along with their curiosity. As the teacher, a great starting place is to ‘notice and name’ something you see in words. For example you can think out-loud and say, “I notice that the /n/ in noticers is spelled with an <n> but the same sound in knowers is spelled with a <kn>. This models showing a curiosity about words. Depending on the age and stage of your word inquirers there will be concepts, knowledge and skills you want to dig into through tightly structured investigations. While investigations increase student engagement and build thinking skills it is important to make very clear to the students what they were guided to discover. As it is becoming increasingly apparent with the research on the science of learning, practice takes a greater role than previously thought. To consolidate learning, students need many opportunities for spaced retrieval practice. Why do all this? So students can apply their learning, and in turn also become word noticers and knowers.
Being a word knower encompasses way more than just being able to read and spell words. When you know about words you know many grapheme-phoneme connections, you know how words are built with morphemes and you know a range of affixes and bases; and you also know about the influence that history has on the spelling of words.
At wordtorque our goal is to nourish word noticers and cultivate word knowers!
Word Inquiry Questions
This set of downloadable Word Inquiry Question charts is intended to support your word study with students.
As we investigate words we have a set of questions we need to ask. The order in which you ask them can vary depending on your purpose, as can the emphasis you place on each. If your goal is a comprehensive study of a specific word and its family you will spend time with each question. Yet, if your goal is to study a particular affix or a set of graphemes, it will look a little different.
For example if you want to study when you use <ck> instead of <k> you will have a bank of words, but it’s important to tap into the meaning of them and determine their structure before looking into the letters and working out the orthographic convention around which grapheme to use when.
Each of the five questions is explained in detail along with suggestions for how to use them as you study words with your students. The icons I use to provide a quick reference are explained. There are 8 charts in this set, including examples showing their usage with the words play and revision.
Word Inquiry Process Cards
This set of downloadable Word Inquiry Process cards is intended to support your word study with students.
The Word Inquiry Process outlines the steps we move through to work out something about how words work. English orthography is not random and the structure of words can be investigated scientifically. The Word Inquiry Process is structured and develops critical thinking skills as students learn to analyze, synthesize and find relationships among words.
Investigations, big and small, start with a question, posed from an observation. These are usually teacher generated in line with the curriculum or a noticing of an area of study that would be pertinent for the students.
Of course, sometimes students notice something compelling about our orthography, and it can lead to a class or small group investigation. The teacher will guide the students to generate hypotheses and test data to draw conclusions. The process is often a little messy and will likely involve much going back and forth. It will absolutely include explicit teaching. At times this will be prior to a hypothesis being put forward, as the students don’t have enough background knowledge to even make a meaningful guess. At other times you will find you need to stop and take a side track to explain something that will allow students to continue investigating productively. It is vital that investigations finish with a very clear explanation of the orthography being studied, be it members of a word family, a group of affixes, a suffixing convention, or some orthographic phonology. Additionally we always want to be explicit about what this particular investigation teaches us about the system of how English words work. Intentional practice of concepts must form an integral part of the process in order to solidify skills.
The cards in this series can be printed as wall cards or a smaller size so you can make clear to your students each step of the process. Magnus, the magnificent magnifying glass, helps guide students through the process. His name comes directly from the Latin word magnus which has a sense of “great”. He is often called Mag for short. His sister Meg, whose name comes from the Greek megas, also meaning “great”, often steps in to help him out, but not in this set of cards.
Morphology Matters
FREE – A List of Affixes
These free downloadable affix reference charts are intended to support your word study with students. They do not contain an exhaustive list. Through your investigations of words I hope you will encounter more affixes and attest them with your students. Add them to your list! Always remember that just because a letter or group of letters can function as an affix it does not mean it will in every word, as <re> is not a prefix in red, and nor is <ing> a suffix in king. Determining an affix includes thinking about the meaning of the word and identifying the base.
The affixes have example words to illustrate their usage. When there are two example words, this indicates the affix has different usages it would be helpful to study.
Phonics Fundamentals
FREE – Tuning In Alphabet Chart for Beginners
This free downloadable alphabet chart, with its delightful graphics, goes beyond the traditional one letter – one sound images typically shown for our youngest learners. A few key letters have been chosen to introduce the concept that letters frequently represent more than one sound. Have you ever seen an alphabet chart that shows <y> to be anything other than a yak or a yoyo? Most of the time <y> functions as a vowel grapheme so we should show this, even though it’s never initial in a base. Rather than cognitively overloading children, it opens the door for discussions about the function of letters.
These alphabet charts can be printed with or without uppercase letters. Lowercase letters are the really important ones for those beginning their literacy journey as they are used so much more frequently than uppercase. Learning and practising the movement pathways to write lowercase letters is a win-win situation as it speeds up letter recognition at the same time children learn to write their letters.
Grapheme Card Sets
These card sets are available formatted for both A4 and US Letter size. As they will often be used as wall displays we have attempted to make the formatting as specific as possible.
The cards are organised into groups of unigraphs, digraphs, and trigraphs. The intent is that you immediately include some digraphs along with your studies of unigraphs; <th>, <sh>, <ee>, and <ay> can be introduced very early on.
To highlight multiple pronunciation options, some graphemes have more than one card. We have to strike a balance between giving students accurate information while not cognitively overloading them. Thus, as you investigate a new phoneme for a grapheme you might replace your current grapheme card with a new one showing a newly studied pronunciation. Not every pronunciation for a grapheme has been included, as some are rarely used, or encountered only in more complex words. On some occasions you may feel the target grapheme is pronounced the same way in two of the words offered – rest assured for some accents it will differ. Conversely you may think of a pronunciation not included. Some examples of graphemes being unpronounced in a words have been included. For example, we don’t pronounce the <l> in salmon or the <h> in hour. Students should be introduced to the concept that letters can be unpronounced in words but will still have a function, often a tale to tell from history.
The Getting Started Graphemes Chart Set
These charts are organised into three sets:
Set 1: Grapheme Strips
These strips have been designed for children with few or no foundational literacy skills. A whole alphabet chart can be overwhelming initially and yet taking one letter at a time moves too slowly. As quickly as possible we need students to have a bank of letters and associated sounds which they can manipulate to build words. A strip of letters linked in some way is ideal for short, repetitive practice. They can be used to map letters to 1 – 2 commonly linked phonemes. For convenience, the strips have also been included as multiples of the same on one page.
Set 2: My First Grapheme Charts
This chart set consists of 4 separate pages
- the alphabet
- digraphs and one trigraph – some commonly encountered consonant and vowel digraphs/trigraphs
- vowels – vowel unigraphs, a few digraphs and one trigraph with 1 -2 phonemes for each, Marker <e> introduced
- consonants – consonant unigraphs and a few digraphs.
Set 3: My Second Grapheme Charts
This chart set consists of 4 separate pages
- the alphabet – with up to 4 phonemes for a grapheme and some examples of unpronounced letters
- digraphs and trigraphs – a larger bank of commonly encountered consonant and vowel digraphs
- vowels – vowel unigraphs and a larger bank of digraphs, a trigraph, and 1-3 phonemes for each. Marker <e> showing 3 different functions
- consonants – digraphs and trigraphs contrasted with some consonant clusters
The main challenge we have when supporting students beginning their literacy journey is balancing the need for accurate information about our English orthography against cognitive overload. It is important to establish, right from the onset, that letters can make more than one sound, and that letters frequently work as digraphs. If we stay in the zone of one letter – one sound for too long it can be a stumbling block for students. It is important from the onset to introduce a few letters with more than one sound, along with a few digraphs. If we are working with one letter – one sound we tell our students, “This letter can make this sound and maybe others we might discover later on. It makes the sound we are learning in the words we are reading and spelling.” Similarly we can say, “Letters often team up – two of them making one sound. We are learning about a few of these and later on we might discover more.”
The Comprehensive Graphemes Reference Chart Set
These charts are organised into two sets:
Teacher Reference
The first two pages (no graphics) are intended for teacher reference, or could perhaps be used with secondary students or adults. Printing these to have as a ready reference could be quite useful for you.
Student Reference
The next two pages outlining vowel and consonant graphemes could be printed back to back on thick card and used as a reference for older students. There are simplified versions of these for younger or less skilled word inquirers (Tuning In Alphabet Chart for Beginners; My First Grapheme Charts; My Second Grapheme Charts).
Following this the pages include the graphemes grouped for a specific focus:
- vowel unigraphs and Marker <e>
- vowel digraphs and trigraphs
- consonant unigraphs
- consonant digraphs and trigraphs
- doubled consonants within bases
- consonant clusters
Orthography Intertwined: Lesson Supports
FREE – Making Morphology Visible & Attesting Affixes
This activity, accompanying cards and worksheet is intended to support your studies of morphology.
In order to decide if some letters are functioning as a prefix you have to decide on the structure of the word.
You cannot decide on the structure until you first think about the meaning of the word.
Boxing the base and underlining affixes makes the morphology very clear.
Homophones Game
Homophones are great examples of why our orthography needs to be studied as an integrated whole.
Homophones are words that sound the same but are spelled differently.
So that’s phonics – different letters for the same sound.
However, studying the morphology of a word often helps make the spelling choices clearer. For example daze and days. And then there’s the etymology – the history of the word always helps explain the spelling. Your students will learn a lot about how words work by studying homophones! These cards can be used to play memory/concentration, Go Fish, as matching activities, and as a springboard for deeper study.
Grapheme & Affix Tiles
This set of tiles represents the majority of graphemes and a bank of frequently-used affixes. The intent is to offer an accurate starter set of manipulative materials for working with students in building bases, creating complex words and writing word sums. As you attest more affixes add them to your toolkit.
