Ideas for the Classroom: Word Spinners

Back in August when I entered my new classroom for the first time, I spent most of the day going through the piles of resources in the room.  Most seemed unorganized.  I found several intervention resource series with at least one book missing, piles of miscellaneous worksheets, papers shoved in corners, a tub of reading games, and a box of random items.  I'm sure there was some order to the room that made sense to the person who was there before me, but I was lost.

I immediately started organizing things by priority.  The last box of random items fell to the bottom of the list.  Recently, however, I reopened that box, and found a packet of black arrow spinners, and I started wondering how I could use them.

Spinners are fun. I loved them when I was a kid, and it makes learning seem more like a game.  There is excitement in and anticipation when you get to spin something.  Where will it land?  What will I get?

So after thinking about my kiddos needs and what they were struggling with, I came up with these CVC spinners.

Basic Spinners

They are pretty simple and easy to make.  All you need is:

• Green, yellow, and red construction paper
• Scissors
• Something round (I used a clock)
• A pencil
• A permanent marker
• A rulers
• 3 spinners

I used green, yellow, and red paper to show where the word starts, where the medial vowel is, and where it ends.   You can obviously use any paper you like.

Directions:

1. Trace a circle (I used the clock as a stencil) on each of the sheets of paper and cut them out
2. Use the ruler and the sharpie to make straight lines, dividing each circle into 8 (hopefully even) parts
3. Print out and glue or hand write a letter on each part of the circles - Remember the middle circle should only have vowels on it
4. Use the blade of the scissors to poke a hole in the middle of each circle
5. Stick the bottom part of the spinner through the hole and snap the top part back in place
6. Ta-da!

Here are the letters I used:
 

Green	Yellow	Red
c t b f h r d s	a e e i i o o u	p m s r d b t h

The last two things I did were laminating mine so they would last longer and typing up a Real vs. Nonsense Words sheet so students could record which words they spun. 

 

I used these all last week with my 1st-3rd grade intervention students and they loved them.  The spinners really helped students segment and blend the letter sounds, and they thought some of the Nonsense Words they spun were hilarious.  "Fip" got a lot of giggles.