Making Words¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 2 claims (2 for) · 5 studies (3 review, 1 causal, 1 theoretical), q1–q3 · 0 of 5 report an effect size

Description¶

Making Words, developed by Patricia Cunningham and James Cunningham, is a sequential word-building activity for beginning and struggling readers. Learners receive a small set of letter cards and are guided to build a series of words — starting with short words and progressing to longer ones — by adding, rearranging, and substituting letters, culminating in a "secret word" that uses all the letters. The activity ends with sorting the built words by pattern (e.g., rhyming families, vowel spellings) so learners generalize the letter–sound relationships rather than memorizing individual words.

Design Implications¶

Making Words converts phonics instruction from passive rule-learning into active manipulation of letters, forcing learners to attend to individual phonemes and their spellings. Because each new word is derived from the previous one by a visible change (add a letter, move a letter, change a letter), the activity isolates the alphabetic principle one operation at a time, reducing the working-memory demands of encoding whole words at once Chunking reduces working memory load. [+M]. The final sorting step is where transfer happens: comparing make, take, and cake by pattern teaches the generalization, not just the words.

Context¶

Requirements¶

• A pre-planned letter set and word sequence, ordered from short to long and ending in a word using all letters
• Physical or digital letter tiles each learner can manipulate
• Teacher prompts that name the operation ("add a letter to make at into sat") rather than the answer
• A closing sort in which learners classify the words they built by spelling pattern

Constraints¶

• Effectiveness drops when the teacher builds the words for learners to watch; the manipulation itself is the mechanism [-M]
• Less effective for learners who have not yet developed basic phonemic awareness — segmenting and blending sounds must be at least emerging before letter manipulation pays off [~S]
• If the sort step is skipped, learners may build words as isolated puzzles without extracting the spelling pattern, limiting transfer to reading and writing [-M]
• Poorly sequenced letter sets (too many letters, ambiguous possibilities) create off-task guessing and frustration [~W]

Implementation Variability¶

• Making Words for upper grades — uses longer letter sets and morphological patterns (prefixes, suffixes) for intermediate students
• Making Words Kindergarten — shorter sequences with picture support and shared writing
• Digital adaptations — drag-and-drop letter tiles (e.g., in structured literacy apps) preserve the manipulation while adding immediate feedback
• Working with Words block — Cunningham's Four-Blocks framework embeds Making Words as a daily 10–15 minute routine alongside other word-work activities

Target Learners¶

• Beginning readers in kindergarten through grade 3 who are consolidating letter–sound correspondences Automatic word recognition frees resources for comprehension. [+M]
• Struggling readers and students with dyslexia, who benefit from multisensory, explicitly sequenced phonics work [~S]
• Less appropriate for learners already reading fluently, for whom the activity offers little challenge or new pattern information [~W]

Target Learning Goals¶

• Phonemic awareness: segmenting and blending sounds within words
• Alphabetic principle: mapping phonemes to spellings systematically
• Word-pattern generalization: recognizing rimes, vowel teams, and morphological patterns that transfer to new words
• Spelling accuracy in connected writing

Instructions¶

1. Distribute the letter set and have learners place letters in order for quick access.
2. Dictate the first short word and have all learners build it with their tiles; confirm together.
3. Continue through the sequence, naming each operation ("change the first letter," "add a letter at the end") so learners attend to the structural change rather than guessing.
4. Pose the secret-word challenge using all letters; let learners attempt it before revealing.
5. Sort all built words by pattern on a chart, having learners read each word and explain its column — this step converts word-building into generalizable pattern knowledge.

Related Strategies¶

• Word Walls — companion Cunningham routine; the sorted words become a reference for writing
• Dictation and encoding practice — extends pattern knowledge into independent spelling
• Decodable text reading — provides connected-text application of the patterns built in the lesson

Examples¶

• Four-Blocks Literacy Framework (fourblocks.org) — Making Words is a core daily activity in the "Working with Words" block across K–6 classrooms.
• Month-by-Month Phonics (Cunningham & Hall) — published curricula that sequence Making Words lessons by grade level and month.
• Reading Recovery–style individual lessons — teachers adapt the letter-manipulation format for one-to-one tutoring with the lowest-achieving first graders.

Key Sources¶

• Cunningham, P. M., & Cunningham, J. W. (1992). Making Words: Enhancing the invented spelling-decoding connection. The Reading Teacher, 46(2), 106–115.
• Cunningham, P. M. (2009). Making Words: Lessons for home or school (Grade 1). Carson-Dellosa.
• Ehri, L. C. (2005). Learning to read words: Theory, findings, and issues. Scientific Studies of Reading, 9(2), 167–188. doi:10.1207/s1532799xssr0902_4
• National Reading Panel (2000). Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
• Ehri, L. C., Nunes, S. R., Stahl, S. A., & Willows, D. M. (2001). Systematic phonics instruction helps students learn to read: Evidence from the National Reading Panel's meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 71(3), 393–447. doi:10.3102/00346543071003393