Word Families

Word families are also known as chunk words. These consist of words that end in the same pattern for example the "at" word family includes: cat, hat, bat, sat, rat, etc. The "ug" word family includes: bug, slug, rug, mug, shrug, etc. For students that are struggling to learn to read, word families are a way to boost reading because once the student understands the word pattern you can add a different consonant to the beginning of the words and they should be able to sound out the remainder of the word with practice.