Word Families: Is It Time to Disown Them?
If youve had contact with a child in the early primary grades doing "reading homework," you're bound to have seen what are typically referred to as "word families." Those are the words that end with the same sets of letters--such as fat, cat, sat, mat or sand, hand, land or fall, tall, call. In many reading programs, these word families occupy a central place --since the groupings are thought to help children learn to identify (i.e., read or decode) words more easily.
But is that really what happens?
Sadly, the answer is NO.
If you look carefully, you will notice that all word family training takes place not with meaningful material but with lists of isolated words. It has to be that way since the words have no connection to one another. So (except for a few word-play books created by masters such as Dr. Seuss), it's impossible to put them together and end up with a meaningful message. If you want to test this out, take any "word family" (such as those above) and try to create even three to four sentences where they might appear together and make sense. It can't be done.
As a result, despite hours of training with "word family" worksheets, when children get to real books, the word families offer no help--since no page is ever going to show sets of words with similar endings.
This is just one more example of the reasons why reading education fails. The area is by no means ignored. Huge amounts of classroom and homework time are spent on reading. But the activities carried out during those times are often of no value. Saddest of all, along with not being helped, children also get the message that efforts to learn have no payoff.
What can be done? Ideally, of course, the system should change. But that takes time. If your goal is to help your child now, the best course of action is to help him or her get through whatever word family assignments are offered. For example, if a child has to "come up" with several new members of a family (e.g., "Now write two more words from the 'and' family") just provide your child with the necessary information. That way, he or she does not waste time and effort on an activity that fails to yield any benefit towards improved reading.
Also when your child is reading to you and stumbles on a word (such as "stand") do not point to the end of the word and say, "what family is this?" or "what does this say?" The simplest course of action is to say the word, ask your child to repeat it, and then have him or her start the sentence from the beginning.
This route is so simple that many parents feel it "can't be any good." They have become so used to the children struggling that they think struggle is essential to the learning process. But once they disown the "word families" that should never have been part of the clan to begin with, they do see that the teaching of reading --when done right-- is easy.
