62 Change a Name Game
Courtney Denmark
Strategy Overview:
- The Change-a-Name Game is a learning activity where students take the classic “name game” and change the beginning sound of their name to make a new word. This can also be done with nursery rhymes and common songs, as seen in the example provided below.
- This is important because it teaches students how to segment words into their different parts. By changing the first sound of every word, they are showing their phonological awareness and showing that they can break down and identify sounds.
- This has been shown as an important part of phoneme segmentation. Explicit instruction in phoneme segmentation and blending (as exhibited in this strategy) is much more effective as a teaching strategy than teaching rhyming or vocabulary (Yeh & Connell, 2008).
Strategy in Action
Students will each choose a common nursery rhyme (short ones, preferably, but student independence in choice will be encouraged). They will type (or handwrite, depending on classroom resources) it out the way it is meant to be read. Next, students will go through and change the first letter in each word so that it is all the same. Students will then read aloud (in small groups) their new rhyme, giving themselves and their group members an opportunity to practice the letter sounds and the new words they have created.
Related Resources:
Yeh, S.S., & Connell, D.B. (2008). Effects of rhyming, vocabulary, and phonemic awareness instruction on phoneme awareness. Journal of Research in Reading, 31(2), 243-256. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9817.2007.00353.x
