Engaging Digital Word Work Activities for Literacy Centers

Today, I want to share some ideas for digital word work activities that you can use in your classroom. Digital activities are great for teachers because they save time and paper, but they still help our students learn all the important skills they need to know. The digital activities in this post will help you teach your students phonics, spelling, and sight words. Many of the activities can be used for either small groups or centers. Some can even be changed to use for whole group instruction.

Digital Word Work Activity #1

As a center, your students can build words with digital magnetic letters. Each student can build words at their appropriate learning level, even when working on the same phonics concept. For example, when working on the L blend, emerging students can choose from options like fl, bl, or gl to complete the word “flower.” Intermediate students can choose from a jumbled assortment of letters like h, k, l, t, and f to create the same word. When students are ready for more of a challenge, they can type a sentence for each new L blend word that they created.

Digital Word Work Activity #2

You can also use digital magnetic letter activities for small group instruction. You can have all the students work on the same blend, but each student can build a different word from that blend. For example, one might be working on the word “crab” while another works on “crow.” As the students create new words for the “cr” blend, you can make a running list on an anchor chart of these words. You can write “cr” in a different color if you’d like to make the blend stick out more for the students. At the end of your small group instruction time, you can have students practice reading the words on the chart aloud.

Digital Activity #3 with Spelling Words

In centers or small groups, students can refer to a list of spelling words and “graph” the words. This means they will type the words in columns based on their number of letters. Emerging students can type in columns for three, four, five, and six-letter words. Intermediate students can use these columns, plus added columns for words with seven and eight letters. Students that are ready for an even greater challenge can graph words with nine or ten letters!

Digital Activity #4 with Spelling Words

Your students can also practice parts of speech with their spelling words. Emerging students can type their spelling words under either the “noun” or “verb” category, while intermediate students can type the words under “noun,” “verb,” adjective,” or “adverb.”

Digital Activity #5 with Sight Words

With this word work activity, students can mix the word up in the soup bowl and fix it back up. Then they can read the word to a partner and move on to the next word.

Digital Activity #6 with Sight Words

Your students can also practice sight words by using the Kids Doodle app to write sight words on their tablets. Students can draw a word and read it to their classmate. Then their classmate writes the word. They could also type the words instead. You can give your students a sight word list or a digital alphabet chart to help them write the words correctly.

I hope my digital activity ideas will make your job easier by saving you time and paper, and I hope they will also help your students have fun while they do word work! All the digital word work activities I mentioned in this post can be found in my store, The Candy Class. My Digital Word Work Bundle includes 121 phonics activities! You can download it here.

I also have separate resources for the spelling and sight word activities in this post. You can find the spelling resource here and the sight word resource here.

If you are looking for more word work activity ideas that you can do in centers, read my article Word Work Activities: Hands-on Ideas for Literacy Centers. It has plenty of ideas!

Also, if you would like a simple system for setting-up technology use in your classroom next year, make sure to sign-up for my free tech course here. You will also gain access to my free resource library when you sign-up! 🙂

Happy teaching, and thanks for stopping by The Candy Class!

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