Strategy Sunday: Creating Nonsense Words

I looked EVERYWHERE this week for the book Horton Hears a Who but I could not find it.  I was planning on doing this super cute glyph on Friday: 

I asked teachers at 2 different schools, libraries, Barnes & Noble...the list goes on but nobody had it.  I finally ordered it on Amazon but it didn't come until after school on Friday :(  Oh well, I plan on doing Dr. Seuss activities all month BUT I had to quickly come up with something to do on Friday that was Dr. Seuss related.  I had my students search through Dr. Seuss books and look for nonsense words. 

They used context clues to figure out what the nonsense word means.  Next, we listed the spelling patterns we know on the board (blends, vowel digraphs, word endings like tion etc..).  I had the students use the spelling patterns to create a nonsense word of their own.  They wrote as many as they could on a post it.

Then the students wrote a few sentences using their chosen nonsense word.  The group had to guess what each nonsense word meant using the context clues in the sentences.
I really liked this activity because it reinforces spelling patterns/phonics as well as using context clues to comprehend or infer word meanings, AND show, don't tell writing.  Next year, I will introduce this activity in September and we will use it throughout the year.

On a side note, I updated my Lesson Objective Stripes Posters (only the stripes one so far) to include spelling and language arts posters.  I also added a new Literature Circle packet (it's the same as the space one but with a Woodland Creature theme).