Word Ladder Worksheets

Related ELA Standard: RF.2-4.3

Core Standard
Answer Keys Here

Word ladders are fun and engaging worksheets or posters that can have a profound affect for beginning readers. Word ladders give word lists a sense of order when presenting them to students. Students will find this easier to organize and compartmentalize how words relate to one another. They are helpful for reinforcing general phonics skills, letter patterns, and rhyming words. Students can read up or down the ladder to follow along. These worksheets are also helpful for improving spelling skills. As they complete them, they will start to notice sound and spelling patterns which will help them when they are confronted with unfamiliar words. This will help strengthen their written language skills. These worksheets will present students with the use of word ladders to learn various vocabulary from different word families.

Word Ladders Worksheets:

What Is She Doing? - Replace two letters. Another word for what the girl is doing. It all begins with her pouting.

Man's Best Friend - Change, add, and subtract letters to complete the word ladders. They are all related to your favorite pup.

Where is the Goat? - Start with the word "sits". Replace one letter. Synonym for puts down. Many single letter replacements here.

What Is He Reading? - Use the pictures for clues. The hair clue always stumps the boys.

Think - Replace one letter. Makes less thick. Note the number of letters that are needed in each successive term. When you are done, you will have a full feeling.

Change of Seasons - This is a colorful worksheet. Remove one letter. Add two. Look out for that bee!

Fish - What do fish do? That is not your typical fish bowl. It includes picture and sentence based clues to determine the unknown terms.

Playing Games - Is the frog enjoying playing the game? Rhymes can help you through this worksheet.

On the Farm - Don't be chicken... This ends in full home of chickens. Even though it starts off as a baby.

Who is She? - A hare is a bunny rabbit. We will work off of that and make our way to the egg hunt.

Nighty Night! - Do this at night. As you tell, they where eye masks go to sleep. The letter you are removing can be from anywhere inside or outside.

Keep - Do this with your money. Keep it in a Piggy bank and keep saving it.

Restaurant Mess - Follow the clues to find out what the waiter dropped. All things you might do at a restaurant.

Challenge - You ought to be this! Hint: It is not late! For the first clue you might need some background on horses.

That Cat - We begin with a riddle: What will the cat do next? Follow the clues up the word ladder to figure it out.

What is a Word Ladder?


A word ladder is sort of a game that teachers use to teach the letter patterns to the young students. This game also helps in enhancing the student's skills of phonics and rhyming with the help of reading, writing, and repetition. This technique helps your young students to learn about the concept of word families. If we take the example of the word family "at", many of the terms come under this family such as 'that, pat, cat, hat, rat, mat, sat'. Once they learn the word family "at", they get to use their phonics skill to determine the sounds of all the other vocabulary. They can easily read up and down the ladder and practice new terms. Word ladders are great at helping in eradicating any phonetic frustrations. They also build phonics skills and spelling confidence. Eventually, students also build their self-esteem through it.


Word ladders were first introduced by Lewis Carroll. They became popular immediately. Caroll presented two ways of doing these exercises. One was to change only the one letter from the word. The other method was to add or subtract a letter from the term so that a new word could be formed. The word ladders of Lewis Caroll changed all the time. Lewis Caroll always let the people know which type of process he was using to do complete the activities properly.


The come in many different varieties and can be done for 4 to 5 letter words. It is advisable to not use terms that are bigger than this. It can also be done with 3 letter words but that is just too easy. In order to do it correctly, you will have to change exactly one letter between terms. Changing more than one letter makes it really hard. It is also necessary that the position of the word is different from the last one while changing it.


Why Do Teachers Use Word Ladders?


They are extremely helpful for reinforcing a number of written and spoken English language mainstays. They can be super helpful for reinforcing the concept of letter patterns as they apply to spelling and phonics activities. I find them invaluable for helping students learn to rhyme properly. They help you easily reinforce the concept of word families and you will find that they are great to use for those units. You will find that students will quickly become engaged with these activities because they are simple fun little puzzles. I find that students who constantly work with ladders become more confident readers and are much more confident when they approach new vocabulary words that they are completely unfamiliar with.