Word Study

Word Study

Word study provides students with opportunities to investigate and understand the patterns in words. Knowledge of these patterns means that students do not need learn to spell one word at a time.

Students learn that spelling patterns exist and that these patterns help to explain how to spell, read, and write words.

Word study is also designed to build word knowledge that can be applied to both reading and spelling. Because it is closely tied to reading instruction, it also develops students' abilities in phonics, word recognition, and vocabulary.

During word study, we do some of the following activities:

Word sorts:  You will see a ziploc bag come home with small picture cards.  These are used for our word sorts.  The students do several activities with the cards including sorting them according to the feature.  The feature will be beginning sounds for the first 5 weeks.  When you see the sort come home on Fridays, ask your child to sort the words at home.  They should be experts! 

Word hunt:  In this activity, students are looking for pictures around the room that follow the feature we are learning.  For example, we were learning about the beginning sound "b".  The students were looking for a picture that began with a b.  When they found the balloons, they wrote/drew the word under the b.  

Writing sort:  The writing sort is our assessment of whether the students understand and have mastered the skill.  We will say a word, and the students are expected to write the word under the correct column.  At this time, some students are writing just the beginning letter, some are writing beginning and ending letters.  Some students may also be stretching out the word and writing all of the letters in the word.  All of these methods are acceptable and correct.  We are only looking for beginning sounds at this time.