What's Gnu?

Submitted by Mary McCarthy on Apr 05, 2012
Photo of What's Gnu? game

A fun confidence-builder for early readers, What’s GNU? helps young players build their spelling skills and vocabularies. The object of this game is to practice spelling out 3-letter words. This can be done by choosing which letter tile will make a word, re-arranging the letters, changing a consonant or vowel to make a new word, and many other variations. Widely available in toy stores or online.

Materials: 
  • What's Gnu? game
  • Dymo tape for braille adaptation
Procedure: 
  1. Have the first player slide the Letter Getter to reveal two letter tiles
  2. Use the tiles to create three-letter words on the Word Cards.
Variations: 
  • The words can be increasingly complex, as a student's level permits.
  • It is easy to put dymo-tape braille on the tiles to adapt it for students who are blind.

 

whats gnu collage

 

Common Core and Braille Standards
Foundational Skills: 
RF.K.1d Recognize and name all upper- and lowercase letters of the alphabet.
RF.K.3 Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words.
RF.K.3a Demonstrate basic knowledge of letter-sound correspondences by producing the primary or most frequent sound for each consonant.
RF.K.3b Associate the long and short sounds with the common spellings (graphemes) for the five major vowels.
RF.K.3c Read common high-frequency words by sight (e.g., the, of, to, you, she, my, is, are, do,does).
RF.K.3d Distinguish between similarly spelled words by identifying the sounds of the letters that differ.
Kindergarten - Word Analysis, Fluency, and Systematic Vocabulary Development : 
K.1.6 Recognize and name all uppercase and lowercase letters of the alphabet.
K.1.15 Read simple one-syllable and high-frequency words (i.e., sight words).
K.1.15a Read simple high-frequency words in uncontracted braille.
K.1.15b Read simple high-frequency words in contracted braille.
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