Word stress dominoes
Here are 30 free printable word stress dominoes for teaching pronunciation. These dominoes can be used in several ways to help your students recognize and effectively learn syllable stress. The printables contain words with 1 to 3 syllables and 5 different word stress patterns.
All you need to do is print and cut out 1 or more of the dominoes worksheets and you are good to go!
Teaching word stress patterns – Warm-up
Before using the word stress dominoes it is best to do a quick warm-up to make sure your students are up to speed with the concepts of syllables and word stress in English pronunciation.
First of all, write 5 words on the board that have the five different word stress patterns used in this activity. For example, Carrot – Balloon – Crocodile – Tomato – Engineer
Now ask your students how many syllables each word has. Demonstrate if need be and underline the syllables in each word.
Next, ask your students which of the syllables is the loudest or stressed in each of the five words. When they answer correctly draw dots above each syllable. Draw a big dot above a stressed syllable and a small dot for an unstressed one.
Finally, erase all the words from the board but leave the dots on the board. Now that you have only the five word stress patterns, ask your students to brainstorm words for each one. Write their ideas under the correct pattern and continue until you see they understand.
Using the word stress dominoes
Once you have completed the warm-up and students are familiar with word stress, there are few things you can do with these dominoes. You need to use large tables or clear some floor space for the activities.
These activities are good for pair work or small groups. In all these activities, emphasise that students should say the words out loud. This helps them to recognise the correct stress and also helps you as the teacher to correct any mistakes.
1 – You can get the students to join the dominoes. Using 1 or more sheets ask your students to match the dominoes end on end. For example, if you only used sheet 1 the dominoes would line up as – carrot – computer – wonderful – alive – tomato – understand. The dominoes will also form a concentric circle.
The pages have been designed so that you can use any combination of the printouts you like and it is still possible to form a circle of them. Note that multiple pages will present multiple combinations. All 30 dominoes are challenging, you can just see which group can make the biggest circle of matching words.
2- Use them to play dominoes! You will need to print at least 3 different word stress dominoes sheets per group. Divide your class into small groups of 3 or 4 students.
Next, a shuffled set of dominoes should be dealt out evenly amongst each group. Whoever goes first places on domino on the table, the next player must put down a domino that matches the stress pattern at either end of the domino on the table.
Students take turns putting down dominoes. If a student cannot place a correct domino, move on to the next student’s turn. The winner is the student who places all of their domino cards down first.
3 – The easiest thing to do is a simple matching activity. You can cut the words and the stress patterns out separately so that get 12 cards per sheet. Hand out sets to students or small groups and get them to match them correctly.
