Heart Words Uno-style Schwa Game

Learning the schwa spelling pattern can be a lot of fun.

Practicing Schwa words is easier with this Schwa sound activities game. There are some spelling patterns to learn. Match the sound patterns and win.

Kids are WILD about heart words UNO. They learn as they play. They want to play again and again.

The secret to this game is extra wild cards.

All the cards in this game are words that have the schwa /short u sound.

Some of the words follow the: v, m, n, th spelling pattern for the vowel /o/.

love, some, none, other, ….

Get your copy of the game here

Some have the vowel /a/ pattern.

above, again, extra, …

Some are Wild Spelling patterns:

idea, balloon, dinosaur, the, what, of, because, ….

48 Schwa words

16 are wild

+ 8 action cards: Skip, +2, +3, Regular Wild

Full rules and explanation included.

Players can match to color group or letter pattern. They must read the word on the card.

Heart Word Mapping Manual

How to teach the heart words just got easier with this mapping manual for teachers. Decoding and encoding by the spelling patterns. Sound articulations and spelling rules all organized in one place.

Detailed sight word mapping by sounds, with articulation support.

Help is at your fingertips with these colorful tabs on the teacher’s manual. Low Prep organized Teacher’s Guide. Support your students by explicitly teaching heart word mapping sorted by sounds. Differentiated levels, cumulative instruction, phonics, and spelling patterns. Student worksheets. Articulation images with detailed explanations. Great for reading intervention!

Heart words grouped by the sounds make it easier for students to practice and retain the information.

Unique Heart Word Decoding Elkonin Boxes

  • Full Red Heart – Focused heart sound skill
  • Heart Outlines– Previously learned pattern
  • Green line – Decodable sound
  • Green line with a Dark outline – Long vowel that says its name
  • White line with X – silent letter

Articulation Instruction

  • Mouth image with airflow lines
  • Voiced and unvoiced marking under bottom lip ~
  • Detailed descriptions of lip and mouth movements
  • Helpful descriptions of sound: bursts, vibrates, air pushes

Spelling Patterns – Tabs

Vowel Sounds, Schwa, 2 Long u sounds, Digraphs, R-Controlled, R-Trigraph, consonants, th/th voiced and unvoiced, wh

Consonants – Begin c, k, ending ck, ending k, ke, ic, soft & hard g, dge, ending l, ll, le 

  • more

s = z sound

The suffix – ed has 3 sounds

contractions

tricky Y

  • more

How will this help you?

Well-organized resource. Easy to grab and teach with No-prep work.

Heart Words are orthographicly mapped for you. Explicit phonics.

Code-based spelling instruction.

Color-coded decodable sounds are green or darker outlines for long vowels.

Heart Words and decodable words are grouped together by similar sounds, which makes teaching them easy and sound-focused.

Sound checks on the back cover.

Vowel articulation on the last page.

Detailed sound articulation directions are at your fingertips.

Student worksheets are versatile to use. Follow the link to see the video.

Cumulative Instruction

Heart Words and High-frequency words grouped by sounds are presented in a sequential and cumulative format.

Starting with the simplest words first and then progressing to more advanced words.

Example – short a

at,

an,

and,

am,

as * ( this one is the heart sound, s = z) The other words were decodable.

Suffix Eraser Whiteboard Game

This is an easy no-prep whiteboard game that we did the other day. We simply used some words from the UFLI lesson 107 suffix spelling changes roll and read. They had to remember to erase the double consonants and the suffix.

Students are challenged to find the hidden root words.

Added suffixes seem to come very naturally when we are speaking, but it grows more challenging when we need to spell or read these longer words.

Students are often intimidated by the length of a word. They often say “I don’t know” or “I can’t.” too quickly. Plural words and past tense words may be some of the first words they will encounter. I have made fun games for both of those skills.

This is an easy no-prep whiteboard game that we did the other day. I simply used some words from the UFLI lesson 107 suffix spelling changes. I wrote the words on the board and then the four students took turns trying to find the main root word. All the words that I chose had the double consonant pattern.

I used simple words like bag, pop, slip, win, and more…

The girls enjoyed it so much that we had to adapt the game and play it again the next day.

There are a lot of spelling skills that you can teach with just the suffix -ed.

  • 1:1 Doubling
  • Drop the Y and add i
  • Drop the silent /e/ on long vowel words

You can also use the game cards for sound sorting activities or making sentences for past and present.

Heart Word Uno Game: th, wh, w

th, wh, w Heart Words. By focusing on a target skill, teaching these sight words can be easier for some students. Instead of choosing random sight words that may span over many new skills and spelling patterns. Choosing similar words will help them focus on what they are learning and help them escape the guessing game. I have found this very helpful strategy during reading intervention, especially with dyslexic students.

There are some tricky sight words that may leave many students guessing. Without lots of heart word practice, they may be relying on predictive reading strategies.

Heart Words

What is a heart word? Simply put and heart word is very much like a Sight Word, or a High-Frequency Word with one expectation. The heart word has at least one part of the word that needs to be memorized by heart.

The word they.

The word (they) may be decodable for more advanced students who know that the /th/ is a digraph and sometimes the letters /ey/ can make the long /a/ sound as in the word obey. For other students, the word (they) could be overwhelming as they try to decode four letters that are not making their normal letter sounds.

Grouping th, wh, and w, Words Together

By focusing on a target skill, teaching these sight words can be easier for some students. Instead of choosing random sight words that may span over many new skills and spelling patterns. Choosing similar words will help them focus on what they are learning and help them escape the guessing game. I have found this very helpful strategy during reading intervention, especially with dyslexic students.

th wh w uno targeted heart words
th wh w uno targeted heart words. Pure Joy Teaching

This game has th, wh, and w, words.

Wh, and w – usually make the same /w/ sound. Except for words like: who, whom, whose, and whole. In the game, these words are wild cards, because the /wh/ is now making the tricky /h/ sound. This may be hard for ESL students to understand when they read these words in isolation or come across them in text. That is why this game is so helpful. It gives them advanced practice with these spelling patterns. Notice that they all have the letter /o/ after the /wh/.