Reading Instructional Resources Database - Instructional Activities (Search Results)

Lexical Knowledge

What is Lexical Knowledge?
Some words cannot be easily sounded out because they do not follow the conventional letter-phoneme relationshipsÐa child who attempts to sound out words like one and two will not arrive at the correct pronunciation. For these "exception" words, the child will need additional information about correct pronunciation.

What does teaching Lexical Knowledge look like?
Activities that focus on lexical knowledge help children to understand that some words can not be sounded-out. These activities help children to learn which words are not pronounced the way they are spelled. For these activities, teachers may emphasize the "black sheep" of a word family, or may help children to learn the correct spelling for irregular words.

ACTIVITY:

Prepare and assemble 10 to 15 word cards with different irregular sight words like SAID, ARE, ONE, LOVE, THE, etc. Duplicate a second set of cards so you have matching pairs of each irregular word. Mix all of the cards together. Give students five cards; give yourself five. Put the rest of the cards in a pile, face down on the table. 

Both of you pick up your cards to see if you have two words that match. If you have a pair, say the word and put the word match down as a pair. Then pick two more cards from the pile. If neither of you has a pair, draw a card from the pile. 

Take turns until all the cards have been drawn or one player has matched all his cards. The player with the most matching pairs is the winner.

Notes:

Reader Type: Emergent readers and developing readers

Language: English

ACTIVITY:

Irregular words are difficult for students to decode because these words do not have regular letter-sound correspondences.

Teachers can select irregular words for study from thematic units or the literature they are using. Children can learn to spell these words through various activities such as dictation tasks; chanting, clapping, or snapping fingers as the words are spelled out; cloze activities, and word bingo, word memory, and other games.

Be sure that words used in irregular word activities are within the child's vocabulary.

Notes: It is important to follow through with this task and make sure that children easily recognize irregular words when they appear in context.

Reader Type: Developing readers

Language: English

ACTIVITY: Make up a collection of flash cards of irregular words that are within the speaking vocabulary of the students. One child sits in a chair, and one child stands behind the chair. Stand in front of the chair and flip over a flash card with an irregular word on it. If the child in the chair identifies it first, he or she gets to stay in the chair and a new challenger from the group stands behind the chair. If the child behind the chair names it first, he or she becomes the new king of the mountain and gets to sit in the chair while other "challengers" come up.

This activity works best with 5 to 6 students, and the teacher should keep the pace lively so students are not sitting idle.

Notes: This activity not only enhances children's lexical knowledge, it really enhances fluency and automaticity. If one student is "king" for too long, that person could graduate to the facilitator role, flipping the cards for other students.

Reader Type: emergent readers and developing readers

Language: English