Making 'Word Work' Work for Us

We are making some exciting new changes in our word work program in 3^rd grade.  We had noticed that while the students are really good at memorizing the 20 words on our spelling lists for a weekly test, they struggled with applying these rules and patterns to other words, and they are not spelling these words correctly in their writing.  In order to be responsive to these struggles, we are changing our word study work so that it focuses on applying rules to as many words as possible and also focuses on spelling words correctly in our daily writing.  We have tried out these changes for two weeks, and we are so happy with what we are seeing in the students’ spelling and writing. 

Here are some key points to our new word work routine:

·         A few days a week we will be using sound cards with the students—you may remember these from 2^nd grade.  We will be adding to the deck of cards all year so that the students will be continually reviewing rules and patterns from this year and previous years so that we can retain these skills.

·         The first two days of the week will focus on learning new patterns and applying them to many words at varying levels of difficulty.  For example, when we learned the ‘oi’ pattern during the first week, some students brainstormed words like coin and boil while others got to disappointment and moisture--students are so excited when they apply these patterns to more challenging words.

·         On our third day we will do dictated sentences where we can apply this week’s patterns along with reviewing previous weeks’ patterns.  This will also give us time for some grammar review.

·         Thursday and Friday are spent writing stories where we focus on applying all of the spelling (and grammar) rules to our writing—first with a partner and then independently.

Students will no longer be bringing home a list of 20 words to memorize for a Friday test.  They will get a new rule, pattern, and/or word part that will be the focus for the week’s word study work.  There will be an at-home activity that will take the place of the old spelling contract that will need to be completed at some point during the week.  The formal assessment for the report card will be done in the same way as it has always been assessed since the standard is for spelling correctly in daily writing; however, students will be a little better prepared for this since our focus is being switched to spelling in our writing.  Informal assessments will be taken by teachers viewing the word lists, dictated sentences, and writing—not for grades, but so that we can see what we are doing well and what we need to work on more.  We see so much potential for this change to improve students’ spelling where it counts—in their daily writing.  We are very excited about how the rest of this year will go!