Word Study

Word study is important because the ability to spell and break words down influences students' ability to read, as well. At the elementary level, students begin to explore spelling and writing. Cunningham and Cunningham explain that between kindergarten and third grade students are being encouraged more and more to write with invented spelling. In doing so, students develop the ability to decode that is significant when reading. "Making Words" activities involve giving individual children some letters which they use to make words. These activities should be 15 minutes long and their end product should be 12-15 words per student. Students should begin with 2-letter words, then build on them with 3-letter, then 4-letter, and so on. Activities of this sort are effective because with one instructional format and activity, students are provided with countless possibilities for experimenting and discovering how our alphabet works.

Having the ability to spell, however, is not very useful without developing an understanding of what words mean and why they are significant to text. Therefore, Yopp and Yopp explore activities that encourage students to learn new words, find their meaning, and apply them to text and other aspects of their lives. One activity suggested involves students reading a text, taking note of 10 words they believe are important, writing them on adhesive strips, and then making a class chart to see which words were most commonly identified as significant. This is a really good activity because it focuses on finding big ideas in text, on identifying words with important meaning, and then on connecting their mean to the main ideas. Emphasizing looking up new words and understanding word meaning further prompts word consciousness; it also actively engages students with words so they can relate them to other words and contexts, explore how the different parts of word influence their meaning, and link words to their own experiences.

Two of my roommates recently moved out of the house we rent from my parents, and they left behind a shelving piece like the one on the left. My parents wanted to toss it but, with my future classroom in my forethoughts, I insisted we reinforce it, paint it, and use it until I can put it in my classroom. (They both rolled their eyes, but it is still standing in the soon-to-be-revamped dining room--BIG WIN for me so early in the week.) Anyway, when I began thinking of my post for this week, I had the "manipulative"/"free-play" area of my classroom on my mind. Then, Yopp and Yopp mentioned, "classrooms that promote word consciousness stimulate students' awareness of, interest in, and curiosity about words so that word learning extends beyond a particular lesson or the confines of a particular lesson"(158). I wanted to find activities that I could use as reinforcers to whatever we are doing with word study, and I wanted the activities to be inviting and fun.

"Let's Make Words!": When I initially came across this, I thought that it would be wasteful to have each student who wanted to do this activity cut out their own letters and etc. In my class, I would probably laminate the pages, cut the letters out and put them in labeled bags; then students would just need to grab a back and a laminated dotted page and practice. They could also fill the lines in with dry-erase markers if they wanted to record the words they create.

"Word Charts": There were a few of these on Pinterest, so I just chose one picture. However, they way that students list words could vary. They can have base letters and interchange certain letters to build words (as seen above) or they could be given a 2-letter root word and then different letters or letter combinations to build more words/create larger words. If you wanted, you could easily make both activities and rotate between them for variety every so often.

"Sort and Spell": I like this because it could be turned into a competitive activity where students challenge one another with word lists and then have to chose a way to organize them on the boards. They would, of course, be expected to spell correctly with the words provided for them. This activity would offer a multitude of options for sorting off and on the board (by number of letter, by sound, by relating categories, etc.) which would encourage creativity and also, with a little more autonomy, students' would be more engaged in their choice of sorting and in the words that are in the lists they choose.

-Did you find any other games that would apply to this that you might want to share?

-Did you find that Cunninghams' or Yopps' piece was more important than the other or do you agree that both are of equal significance to reading development? 

In Class: Readers Theater

Readers Theater is the use of a script related to a picture book or children's novel/book. The students read a script that is adopted from a book, taking turns reading each line. By doing this, the students interact with the story with more expression than they would by just reading the story by themselves. There are no props, costumes, or acting out of the story. The audience should visualize the story by the students reading the script out loud.

This helps to:
-develop fluency
-integrate reading, writing, speaking, and listening
-engage students and motivate them to read
-create purpose and confidence with reading
-provide an opportunity for collaborative learning

It looks like:

This is how it would work:

Reading Fluency

Cunningham and Allington's Chapter 4 introduces us to the methods of teaching reading fluency. This comes from rereading easy books, repetition of words, inflections, reading in groups, etc.; all of these contributing to each student's ability to read words in context, quickly, accurately, and with appropriate expression. It introduces different methods of reading in whole class contexts that will benefit independent reading, and of the provided suggestions, I like chanting and writing the words and the ideas of echo and choral readings. These combined with high-frequency word walls could help encourage reading and writing, as well as, build confidence in reading and writing for students to share.

Deeney's introduction to prosody, with regard to signal words and punctuation, could be developed or strengthened through echo and choral readings. Especially because as a group, the students could be more inclined to inflect appropriately or use exaggerated expression of punctuations. In addition, activities involving word chants and writing will also encourage excitement in reading with fluency.

Activities involving excitement over easy words and books both at home and in classrooms will encourage creativity in writing and bold expression in reading and writing activities. Rasinski introduces the idea of poetry cafes and readers' theatre festivals on Fridays. I really liked this idea, only maybe on more of a monthly basis. If students do the chanting activities and are enthusiastic throughout the week/month in reading aloud with their peers, I think that the cafes and festivals would be successful.

Poetry journals could be an "at-home" activity where the parents, siblings, etc. are encouraged to write poetry on the weekends with their children using vocabulary and contexts relevant to the class material from each week, and then allow the children to perform readings of their work at home. This would be engaging, fun, and be source of reinforcement over the weekend or holidays that seems more like a game than school work.

It would also provide some options over the month for the in-class cafes or theaters. If they have 3 or 4 poems to choose from over the course of a few weeks, the work they choose to present the class will use a broader vocabulary and more variety in content or expression.

Combining classroom engagement with at-home engagement and encouragement of expression and reading, could provide every student with a positive sense of "self" and capability that they can read aloud, they can write well and creatively, and they could be influential even when their writing seems "silly" or "meaningless". Asha Christensen wrote about her struggle to be inspired or put words to a page, and she was able to present her poem as a TedTalk partially because of her incredibly fluent delivery.

How would you encourage creativity for writing in your class?
How might you involve parents in the learning process?