Compound Crowns!

 When I initially taught compound words I had my students make crowns and write as many compound words that they can think of.  We made a big list together as a class first.  Then the students wrote the words and drew a picture of the word on their crowns.  

After we had talked about compound words my students were still in need of some motivation to pick out compound words when they read.    


So I made some crowns out of KFC buckets.  I just went to KFC and they gave me two buckets for free.  My mom use to make crowns for us when we were little out of these buckets.  That's where I got the idea!

After I cut out the desired shape I covered them in tin-foil and glued on gems. 

Here is the Girl Crown.

This is the boy crown.  It's a bit more masculine.  Don't ya think?

You could buy a crown at your local Dollar Tree, too.

Here is how it works.  When someone finds a compound word they give me a thumbs up and continue reading.  Then when I call on them they can tell me the compound word and they get to wear the crown.  If someone already has it then that person congratulates their friend for finding one and passes the crown.

Warning:  This will cause your students to go a bit compound word crazy!

I had to really structure it so that they were looking for them at specific times.  Like during guided reading or reading from our basil as a whole group.     

Do you think this is something you might try in your class?  What do you do to teach compound words?  I love feed back from my bloggy friends!