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Go Fish for Base Words games

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Announcing our first set of Go Fish for Base Words games, designed to draw learners attention to words’ prefixes, bases and suffixes, and to slot easily into phonics teaching sequences. Download the free trial deck here, or the whole set here.

Read then write

Go Fish for Base Words players collect and write pairs of words (not sets of four) with the same base word. The pair of cards then go in a discard pile. The winner is the person who writes the most word pairs.

Learners can copy the words from the cards, or for a harder game spell them from memory. Spelling requires closer attention to a word’s structure than reading.

If using this game with a whole class, teachers can check that words are being written (and thus also read), whereas some phonics reading games can be played by unsupervised children by matching colours or pictures, without reading the words.

Teaching sequence

We often use the Phonic Books’ Totem/Alba/Pet Sitters/Fact Files 2 books with our clients, so these Go Fish games generally follow the phonics targets/sequence in these books, but can be rearranged to match other teaching sequences.

Spelling changes

Common juncture changes when adding suffixes are introduced early e.g. doubling final consonants (e.g. spot-spotting) in Deck 2, and swapping ‘y’ for ‘i’ (e.g. copy-copier) in Deck 3.

There is one free game (there were too many targets for game 5), with base words containing le/little, ve/give, and dge/bridge, as well as a few words ending in ‘ic’ like ‘panic’ and ‘picnic’ which get an extra letter ‘k’ when they become ‘panicked’ and ‘picnicking’ (not ‘paniced’ or ‘picnicing’).

The free deck also introduces dropping final ‘e’ before a vowel suffix, as in ‘little-littlies’, ‘captive-captivity’ and ‘edge-edging’. If you’re using the Sounds-Write Initial Code phonics teaching sequence (as we often are), the free deck best fits at the end of the Bridging Unit.

Pronunciation changes

Often, a base word’s spelling and/or pronunciation changes slightly when it becomes part of a longer word.

For example, the word ‘real’ has one syllable, but in the word ‘realistic’ it is pronounced as two syllables (re-al-ist-ic). The ‘ea’ in ‘please’ changes pronunciation in ‘pleasant’ and ‘pleasure’. The ‘i’ in ‘ride’ is pronounced differently in ‘ridden’.

Go Fish for Base Words games helps you show learners that base words aren’t always pronounced the same, or spelt (or spelled) the same, once they become part of a longer word.

Many prefixes and suffixes appear in multiple games, demonstrating that they are highly reusable. The most recent Melissa and Lori Love Literacy podcasts (always excellent) are about polysyllabic words, and emphasise prefixes and suffixes as key units of our writing system.

Both spellings

Where there is more than one correct way to spell a word (usually because of differences between UK and US English), both spellings are included, as in the word ‘judgement/judgment’ above. We Aussies are aware of both UK and US spellings.

Reprintable and affordable

Purchasers of these games can print extra copies for the students/clients in their class/on their own caseload. Each game prints on three sheets of A4 light cardboard, which can be taken home for scissor skill practice prior to play. If the dog eats them, just print another set. Like all our games, they are super-affordable. Click here to see these and all our other download-and-print games.

A big THANKYOU to Elle Holloway for always finding new ways to make teaching and learning about words fun.