Compound Words Teaching Resources
If you’re digging into compound words with your elementary students, dig into printables, worksheets, and more to bring the study of these fun words to life! This teaching resource collection was created by teachers to save your lesson planning time so you can spend more time doing what you love — actually teaching!
Haven’t taught this part of the ELA curriculum before or in a few years? Our teacher team has put together a quick refresher to get you started! Feel free to skip ahead to the resources if you have all this covered, and you’re just looking to save time on your lesson plans!
What Is a Compound Word?
A compound word merges two or more root words into a new and different word. There are three kinds of compound words:
- Open compound words — These have a space between the words, such as school bus or living room.
- Closed compound words — These have no spaces between them, such as classroom or homework.
- Hyphenated compound words — These have — you guessed it — hyphens between the words, such as dry-erase or forty-four.
Compound Words for Kids
Compound words are a pretty simple concept to teach, but it’s all too common for teachers to skip over the types of compound words. Take it from our ELA teachers: Break down each type for your students!
Open, closed, and hyphenated compound words all have different features, and we’ve put together a collection to help you teach them all!
Take a walk through our compound word collection, and you’ll find a host of resources for teaching open and closed compound words, along with other types.
Compound Words for 2nd Grade and Up
Our collection is home to hundreds of compound word worksheets, open and closed compound word PDF files, instructional slides for compound words, and more. Here are a few of our favorites!
- Compound words anchor chart
- Compound words list
- Combining Words Cut and Paste Activity
- Compound Words Game
- and more!
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Compound Words - Worksheet Pack
Practice using compound words in sentences with. a pair of printable compound word worksheets for older students.
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Compound Words Cut and Paste - Worksheet
Cut, paste, and write to form open and closed compound words with a word-building worksheet.
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Read and Write Compound Words Worksheet
Read and write compound words with a set of fill-in and cut and paste worksheet.
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Combining Words - Compound Word Worksheets for Kids
A worksheet to consolidate students' understanding of compound words.
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Compound Words Poster
Show your students examples of compound words with a pair of printable Compound Word Anchor Charts.
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Compound Words with Pictures - Combining Word Cards
Combine words to make compound words and boost vocabulary skills with a printable combining words word wall.
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Growing Compound Words Interactive Activity
Practice building compound words with an interactive Google Slides compound word game.
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Match and Write Compound Words - Worksheet
Match and write to form compound words with a compound word worksheet.
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Compound Word Matching Game
Combine words to make compound words with a fun, printable Compound word game.
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Building Compound Words - Puzzles
Practice building compound words with this set of 20 puzzles, each with three pieces—two smaller words and the compound word they form.
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SMASH IT! Compound Words Game
Practice compound words with this set of 8 game boards and letter cards.
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Compound Word Dominoes
Practice making new words with this compound word matching game that includes 28 picture/word dominoes.
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Compound Word Smash Up!
Help students practice creating compound words by matching 15 compound word cards with their corresponding decoded word cards.
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Compound Word Puzzles
24 compound word puzzles for students to put together.