Identifying Word Families in English | Reading & Vocabulary Development

Word families are groups of words that have a common feature or pattern - they have some of the same combinations of letters in them and a similar sound. 
For example: at, cat, hat, and fat are a family of words with the "at" sound and letter combination in common.

Words such as 'cat,' 'bat,' 'rat,' 'mat,' 'sat,' and 'that' are examples of words that are in the '-at' family. The chart below outlines the most common word families. Students can learn to read and spell more than a thousand words using these word families.

a	e	i	o	u
-ack	-eat	-ice	-ock	-uck
-ain	-ell	-ick	-oke	-ug
-ake	-est	-ide	-op	-ump
-ale		-ight	-ore	-unk
-all		-ill	- ot
-ame		-in
-an		-ine
-ank		-ing
-ap		-ink
-ash		-ip
-at		-it
-ate
-aw
-ay