Newsletter – Shop Local – May 17, 2024

In this image, one of our Book Bums students is making Memory cards using the words tough, though, through, thought, thorough, and throughout. Those words are TOUGH! They all have an o-u-g-h but the sounds don’t make it easy to determine which word says what. UGH.

Here’s what we do at Book Bums: We teach our kids the word tough. We notice the spelling and try to match the sounds with the letters as we decode the word. (Why is that o in there?!)

I usually share a cheer we did when I was in high school (when there was only one Lakota, and our mascot was the Thunderbirds—T-birds for short.) We said, “T-O-UGH, Say what? Get tough!”

The word tough is the only one of the six tricksters that begins with only a t, not a t-h, so kids usually get that one fairly easily.

Next, we introduce though. It looks just like tough but it has a t-h, not just a t at the beginning. This is the trickiest word of the six, because the t-h in though makes a buzz sound, not a puff sound. Tricky.

The third word we introduce is the word through. It looks just like though except there’s an r in there. If we make the sounds in order, we’ll probably decode this one correctly. An additional hint is that there’s a hole (the o) right through the middle of the word through.

The fourth word we introduce is the word thought. Thought looks just like though, but it has a t at the end. We’re essentially teaching our students about the “dead giveaways” that indicate what each word says. We almost never do this with the explicit, systematic phonics instruction we embrace at Book Bums. We Make the Sounds We See because we know that it’s a No Guess Zone. With these words, we make the sounds while also noticing what makes one word stand apart from the others, because these look a lot alike words are ridiculous!

After we recognize that the word thought has a t at the end, we notice that the word thorough has not one but two o’s. They did a very thorough job of putting both those o’s in there. We note that though o-r usually says /or/, in this word it’s a bossy r. The o doesn’t make a sound at all.

The final word is the easiest. It’s throughout. It’s pretty easy to spot the word out at the end, and it’s also the longest word.

After making our way through these six words, noticing all there is to notice about: tough, though, thought, through, thorough, and throughout we make a Memory game by gluing two of each word onto slightly larger pieces of construction paper (so you can’t see through the paper) and we organize those cards into three columns of four.

To play Memory, students are taught how to remember where the words are once they’ve overturned them. They learn to say the words aloud, they turn them over, and then tap the overturned cards, naming the words again, to help them remember which word is where. The goal is to learn how to remember AND to decode these tough words and find the matches.

Here’s a PDF so you can print the words, make word cards, and play the Memory activity with your young readers. Remember to make it fun!