Working with Words
The first activity in the words block each day is the Word Wall.

Next, we do an activity to help children learn to use phonics to read new words.

In the words block, children learn to read and spell high-frequency words and learn the patterns which allow them to decode and spell lots of words.  The first ten minutes of this block are usually given to reviewing the word wall words.  Word wall is a display of high frequency words above or below an alphabet.  The words are written with thick black marker on colored construction paper and are located by first letter only.  The teacher adds 5 words a week.   Students practice new and old words daily by looking at them, saying them, clapping or snapping the letters, writing the words an paper, and self-correcting the words with the teacher.  The remaining 20-25 minutes of words time is given to an activity which helps children learn spelling patterns.  A variety of activities are included in this block each day the most popular of which is Making Words.  Making Words is an active, hands-on, manipulative activity in which children learn how to look for patterns in words and how changing just one letter or where to put a letter changes the whole word.   The children are given the six to eight letters that will form the final word.   The teacher begins with two letter words, then builds to three, four, and five letter words (example: it, in, pin, pit, rip, run, runt, punt, trip, turn, print, turnip).   They then sort the words according to a variety of patterns including beginning sounds, rhymes and endings and use words sorted to read and spell words with similar patterns. Word wall is practiced every day but the second activity varies.  In addition to Making Words, this second activity could be Rounding up the Rhymes, Guess the Covered Word, Using Words you Know, Reading/Writing Rhymes or another activity through which children learn how to use patterns to decode and spell hundreds of words.

All the activities in the Words Block are designed to be multilevel.  Across each activity, there is something for children to learn regardless of whether they are struggling or accelerated.

• If you watched children doing the daily word wall practice, you would assume that they are all learning the same thing--how to spell words.  But what they are doing externally may not reveal what they are processing internally   Imagine that the five new words added to the wall one week were come, where, they, boy, friend.  During the daily word-wall practice, the children who have already learned to read them are learning to spell them.  Other children, however, who require lots of practice with words, are learning to read them.
• While rounding up the rhymes, some children are still developing their phonemic awareness as they decide which words rhyme and are learning that rhyming words usually--but not always--have the same spelling pattern.  As they use the words rounded up to read and spell new words, children who need it are getting  practice with beginning letter substitution.   Children who already have well-developed phonemic awareness and beginning letter knowledge are practicing the important strategy of  using known words to decode and spell unknown rhyming words.
• Making Words lessons are multilevel in a number of ways.  Each lesson begins with short easy words and progresses to some medium-size and big words. Every Making Words lesson ends by the teacher asking, "Has anyone figured out the word we can make if we use all our letters?" Figuring out the secret word which can be made from all the letters in the limited time available is a challenge to even our most advanced readers.  Making Words includes even children with very limited literacy who enjoy manipulating the letters and making the words even if they don't get them completely made until the word is made with the big pocket chart letters.  By ending each lesson by sorting the words into patterns and then using those patterns to read and spell some new words, we help children of all levels see how you can use the patterns you see in words to read and spell other words.
• Guess the Covered Word lessons provide review for beginning letter sounds for those who still need it. The most sophisticated readers are consolidating the important strategy of using meaning, all the beginning letters and word length as cues to the identification of an unknown word.
• Using Words You Know lessons provide children who still need it with lots of practice with rhyming words and with the idea that spelling pattern and rhyme are connected.  Depending on what they already know, some children realize how words they know can help them decode while other children realize how these words help them spell.  If you want to make the lesson a bit more multilevel at the upper end, include a few longer words that rhyme and help students see how their known words can help them spell the rhyming part of longer words.  In the Coke, Sprite, Grape lesson, children could have used these words to read or spell escape, termite, invite, provoke and artichoke!
• Reading/Writing Rhymes is perhaps the most multilevel activity.  All beginning letters, including the common single consonants and the less common, more complex digraphs and blends, are reviewed each time the teacher distributes the onset cards.  Phonemic awareness is developed as children say all the rhyming words and blend the vowel pattern with the beginning letters.  Children whose word awareness is more sophisticated learn that there are often two spellings for the long vowel patterns and develop their visual checking sense as they see the rhyming words with the different patterns written on the same chart.  They also learn the correct spelling for many of the common homophones.  The addition of some longer rhyming words helps them learn how to decode and spell longer words and allows them to write more interesting rhymes.

Early in the year, it takes the whole ten minute to call out, chant, write and check five words.  As the year goes on, however and writing and correct handwriting become more fluent and automatic, the five words can usually be written in five minutes.  This leaves five minutes which we utilize to do an on-the-back activity which extends children's knowledge of these words or helps them learn to spell other words.
Endings.  This activity helps children learn to spell word-wall words which need an ending.   Imagine that the five Word Wall words you called out for them to locate, cheer for and write were:
 want
 eat
 look
 talk
 play

Have them turn their papers over and say something like:
"Today we are going to work on how to spell these Word Wall words when they need an ending.  I will say some sentences like the ones many of you write and you listen for the Word Wall word that has had an ending added:

My friends and I love eating at McDonald's.
 We were looking for some new shoes.
 I was talking on the phone to my cousin.
 My mom wants the new baby to be a girl
 My friend spent the night and we played Nintendo 'til 11:00.

After each sentence, the children identify the word-wall word and the ending, decide how to spell the word and write the word with the ending on their papers.

 This activity uses three endings --s, ed, ing and five different words.  When we first do this activity, we use fewer endings and/or fewer words.  For example, we might call out five words to write on the front but concentrate on adding endings to only one or two of these on the back.  Imagine that eat and look are two of the five words, your sentences for the on-the-back activity could be:

He looks hungry.
We were looking for Tommy.
She looked in the closet.
He eats peanut butter sandwiches every day.
We were eating when the fire drill went off.

The children would have the words looks, looking, looked, eats and eating written on the backs of their papers.
 

These endings do not require any spelling changes.  Later in the year we would include some words that needed to have the -e dropped, a y changed to i,  or a letter doubled.  In second and third grade, in addition to s, ed and ing, we say sentences containing Word Wall words to which y, ly, er and est have been added.   Since we decide before writing each word how we will spell it, everyone spells each word correctly. This additional information about how to spell words with a variety of endings and spelling changes really moves the accelerated learners along in their writing ability.
 
 
 

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