Useful websites for creating literacy resources and lesson activities
I’ve compiled a quick guide to some of the online resources that I’ve found most useful when creating my own worksheets, activities and games! I’ve also included links to helpful resources that you may like to use to add variety to your lessons.
Finding words with certain graphemes, morphemes or letter-sequences
Spelfabet
The word lists on Alison Clarke’s website, Spelfabet, are really easy to navigate. You can find lists based on phonemes, graphemes or morphemes. This is my favourite place to go to pick out an appropriate word to exemplify a certain phoneme, grapheme or morpheme.
Phinder
Phinder is a useful website from the researcher Dr Devin Kearns that enables you to search for words that contain certain graphemes. You can specify which phoneme you are targeting – for example, you could search for words in which <ow> makes the /aʊ/ sound (e.g. cow), and this will avoid retrieving words in which <ow> is pronounced as /əʊ/ (e.g. snow).
The Free Dictionary
The Free Dictionary will usually come up if you do an online search for words including certain sequences of letters. It will give you a huge choice or words (and some that are probably not real words!). It presents the words according to their number of letters, which can be helpful if you are looking for a multisyllabic or multimorphemic word (long!) or something more basic (short!). However, this site works simply on letter-matching, so you’ll have to check that the words are suitable.
Etymological research
Etymonline
Anyone who has hunted for an etymological explanation on the internet will have come across Etymonline! It’s a great tool for checking whether words are etymologically-related, and it’s always on-hand for answering student queries that you don’t know the answer to…
Linguistics Girl
If you’re struggling to figure out the best (I hesitate to say ‘correct’) morphological analysis for a word, you’ll generally find that Linguistics Girl has got there first and done if for you. Her morphodex is excellent for checking your hypotheses about the finer details of word sums.
Making morphological matrices
Mini Matrix Maker
If you’re a beginner with matrices, the mini matrix maker is a great way to start. You just input your word sums, and it will build a downloadable matrix for you.
Making games
Wordwall
This is my go-to website for creating bespoke games that target exactly what I’m teaching. You can create your own games, and also access lots of resources that other educators have made available. (You need a subscription to access some services and resources.) If you’re interested in taking a look at some of my literacy activities, click here.
Free resources that can be used for literacy activities in lessons
Tutor Group Think
This is a great source of texts that are up-to-date and discussable. Created by teachers Chris Baker and Bill Wilkinson, a new text is posted every day, with a simpler version and a longer version. Even better, you can download the archive of previous texts giving you a huge range of short, topical texts to draw on for a quick reading activity.
Text Project
More free texts are available here on Dr Freddy Hiebert’s TextProject website. These are categorised by age group, and there are some that are specifically designed for teenagers.
Phonics and Stuff
The Morpheme Mix puzzle is a fun challenge if you have a few minutes to spare in a lesson.
Wordtorque
The building bases board allows you to drag graphemes to build a base, then add some basic prefixes or suffixes to build longer words. A constructive activity for your less-confident spellers.
If there are any websites that you have found useful for creating resources or adding variety to lessons, please let me know!
And, of course, if you’re interested in saving yourself a lot of planning and resource-creation time, take a look at LIfTT, the Literacy Intervention for Teens and Tweens! LIfTT aims to provide you with a set of literacy resources that is comprehensive and structured, but still allows a lot of flexibility to customise lessons to suit your students.