Strategies Used
-Day 1-
Building, Blending, & Manipulating Words
via Word Tiles
One of the most effective practices for teaching word study was through the use of building, blending, segmenting, and extending words using word tiles. (A. Evangelisti, personal communication, November 29, 2017). This allowed students the hands-on opportunity to manipulate magnetic letters, letter cards, or individual letter tools to form word parts. In doing so, students were actively exploring the alphabetic layer and examining the relationship between letters and sounds. They learned to match single letters and pairs of letters to specific sounds in order to create words. My students were able to build specific words that adhered to that week’s word pattern through guided instruction. Students were given various words to build in a 4-minute time span. The process of building these words began with one word, then took students through the process of deleting and substituting various sounds in order to make new words. For example, when learning about short a sounds, students started with the word “cat” and then progressed into “fat,” “pat,” and “rat.” For each group, this process looked a little bit different, depending on their current letter-sound knowledge. Some groups were guided throughout the whole process, while others were given more independence to ensure differentiation for each student.
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-Days 2 & 3-
Word & Picture Sorts
The second strategy approach that my word study utilized is that of sorting via sounds and pictures. There are a variety of sorting methods that students participated in. However, the two most common methods that we participated in were word sorting and picture sorting. Word sorting involved students examining words on small pieces of paper, and then placing words within columns or groups, based on specific patterns within the words. Patterns included short vowels, long vowels, beginning blends, digraphs, final blends, consonant patterns, rhymes, etc. For example, a student was instructed to sort a group of words based on long a vowels or short a vowels. Depending on the current phonological knowledge of the student, he/she was then challenged to brainstorm additional words to add to each group.
It was important that students could not only identify word patterns and sort them accordingly, but also pull from prior knowledge to add additional words. Picture sorting involved doing almost the same thing as word sorting, but there were only pictures shown on each card. Students sorted cards according to spelling patterns of each picture.
It was important that students could not only identify word patterns and sort them accordingly, but also pull from prior knowledge to add additional words. Picture sorting involved doing almost the same thing as word sorting, but there were only pictures shown on each card. Students sorted cards according to spelling patterns of each picture.
-Day 4-
Word Hunts
The third strategy implemented in day 4 of our word study was a word hunt. In the activity of a word hunt, students were given a passage that explicitly integrated the specific word pattern of that week. For example, during the week of final blends, students were given a passage that had many words with “lp, mp, ph, and pt” endings. Students were required to read the passage once through, and then go back into the passage and “hunt” for the words that included the specified letter-sound relationship. Those words were then highlighted and read aloud by each student. Continuing into day 5, students then utilized their passage once more to practice the strategy of writing words. Students took a deeper look at their passage and wrote the highlighted words into correct columns. For example, students created columns headed with “lp, mp, ph, and pt” and sorted their words accordingly into each column. This strategy provided students with the opportunity to once again sort words based on letter-sound relationships, but also to practice writing the word patterns they had studied all week.