Adventures in Literacy Land: chaining

Showing posts with label chaining. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chaining. Show all posts

Chaining with Jenn from Reading in Room 11

Hello Literacy Land Friends!  I’m Jenn from Reading in Room 11, and I am thrilled to be a guest blogger at Adventures in Literacy Land. I have been a K-5 Instructional Specialist for 12 years and I am excited to share one of my favorite intervention activities with you - chaining!
This easy intervention is perfect for helping students see relationships in words. It is great for all ages!

What is chaining?
Chaining is a sequence of words that can be built by changing one sound at a time.
For example: at → cat → cot → hot → hat → pat → pan → an

When do you use it?
If you are a classroom teacher, chaining is a great warm up or word work activity before reading a book.

Chaining can also be incorporated into a specific intervention for students.


What materials do you need?
One of the great things about chaining is that you can use a variety of materials.  Some examples are white boards, magnetic letters, or cut up letters. My favorite are the blue and red letters seen below from Really Good Stuff.
This easy intervention is perfect for helping students see relationships in words. It is great for all ages!
How does it work?
Choose the skill: The chains that you choose are dependent on your students and their needs.  Ideally, the words in the chains will follow a specific pattern that students will find in the text that they are reading (ex. short a, digraphs, silent e words).  If you are using chaining as an intervention, then the pattern should be the student’s skill deficit.

Once you have chosen the skill, gather your materials.

This easy intervention is perfect for helping students see relationships in words. It is great for all ages!

Step 1:
Ask the student to make a word, for example “cat” Have the student tap each letter and say the sound ”c-a-t”.  Then they can run their finger underneath and say the word “cat.”
This easy intervention is perfect for helping students see relationships in words. It is great for all ages!


Step 2:
Tell the student to change a sound so that “cat” says “cot” and repeat step 2.  Repeat these steps until you have done 7-10 word chains.
This easy intervention is perfect for helping students see relationships in words. It is great for all ages!


Bonus Tips:
When chaining, it is important to only change one sound/spelling at a time.


There are three ways to change the word.
  • Change a sound: “Change a sound so that cot says hot
  • Adding a sound: “Add a sound so that at says cat
  • Deleting a sound: “Take a sound away so that pan says an

If you are working on long vowels with a silent e, below is a picture of a trick we use at my school when having students chain.  It is a great cue that the vowel will need to say its name, and that the silent e does not make a sound.

This easy intervention is perfect for helping students see relationships in words. It is great for all ages!
Thank you so much for stopping by!  I hope that you area able to use chaining as an easy intervention with your students.  Let me know in the comments if you have any questions!


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This easy intervention is perfect for helping students see relationships in words. It is great for all ages!




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