If you are a teacher with a lesson on teaching compound words, you may have to come up with a savvy, clever and fun lesson. Most of your lesson on teaching compound words will depend highly on what grade you are teaching. Below are a few lesson plans for you to use during your lessons on teaching compound words. Each of these basic lessons are for a second grade English/language arts class. With the subject being, of course, compound words.

Materials and instructions will be listed below, instead of the entire formatted version. You will need to come up with your own objectives, and goals for your students.

Teaching Compound Words

Materials Needed:

Construction paper or colored paper, (colored index cards if you preferred), pictures or index cards of compound words, markers.

Write out the compound word on the chalk board. You should have more than one, so perhaps you should write out a few of them on the board for all of your students to see.  

Objectives:  

• To have students identify compound words
• To have students identify the roots of compound words
• To have students identify and match compound root words so that they can have a full compound word
• To be able to identify compound words by sight throughout their roots

Goals:

• To have students fully understand what compound words are and how they fit together
• To better be able to identify compound words in their reading or texts

Motivation:

Students will have had compound word quizzes in the past and should be very prepared for their compound word activities.

Worksheets will be printed out for students to work on. These worksheets will have compound words on them and should be colorful. The fonts should be rather large and rounded. These fonts need to be fun and appealing to the students.  

Procedure: 

• Worksheets with compound words will be distributed to the class and students will have a set amount of time to complete the worksheets. Once teacher calls time, students will put down their pencils and the teacher will randomly read through the stack of worksheets. 

• Another idea is to play compound word tic-tac-tie. Instead of using “x’s” and “o’s” the teacher will use the root words of compound words. In order to win, students would have to write the second part of the root word in order qualify for winning the tic-tac toe game.

• You could also consider using the board game entitled Jeopardy. You will be able to list arrays of compound words on the Jeopardy board game. All you would have to do is set up the Jeopardy game. Be sure to use several popular and not so popular compound words.

You will find that students will begin to enjoy learning about compound words. They will better be able to use their knowledge of compound words into their writing. It can be a very helpful lesson to learn especially when you are an adult. 

Your lesson on compound words needs to be fun and challenging. Without the fun factor no one would want to listen to any lessons whatsoever.