As students learn to read and write, one of the essential skills they must acquire is the ability to complete words with the ending that they hear. This skill is vital in developing phonemic awareness, which is the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate individual sounds in spoken words. It is also an essential building block in developing literacy and reading comprehension skills. In this article, we will discuss some activities that teachers can use to teach students to complete words with the ending that they hear.

1. Word Families:

Word families are groups of words that have a common ending sound. For example, the “an” family includes words like can, fan, man, and pan. Teachers can introduce word families to students and ask them to complete words by adding the ending sound of a particular word family. This activity will help students recognize the phonetic patterns within words and understand how the ending sound changes to create different words.

2. Rhyming Words:

Rhyming words have the same ending sounds. Teachers can introduce students to rhyming words and ask them to complete words with the same ending sound. For example, if the teacher says the word “cat,” the students can complete the words “bat,” “fat,” and “mat.” This activity will help students develop their phonemic awareness skills and improve their vocabulary.

3. Word Chain:

This activity helps students practice completing words and develop their vocabulary. The teacher starts with a word, and each student in the class adds a word that ends with the last letter of the previous word. For example, if the teacher starts with the word “sun,” the next student can add the word “nut,” and the next student can add the word “tub.” Students must listen carefully to the previous words to ensure that their words are correctly spelled and pronounced.

4. Vowel Sounds:

Students often confuse similar vowel sounds, such as “e” and “i” or “a” and “o.” Teachers can use a variety of activities to help students differentiate between these sounds and complete words with the correct vowel sound. For example, teachers can ask students to listen to a word and repeat it, emphasizing the vowel sound at the end of the word. Then, students can complete words with the same vowel sound.

In conclusion, completing words with the ending that you hear is an essential skill that students must learn to develop phonemic awareness and literacy skills. Teachers can use a variety of fun and engaging activities to teach students this skill, such as word families, rhyming words, word chains, and vowel sounds. These activities can help students improve their vocabulary, develop their phonemic awareness skills, and become more confident readers and writers.