What is Word Work? And who cares? (At least
according to me)
When teaching
students to read you want to hit on the big five (phonemic awareness, phonics,
fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension) right. Everyone knows this. Sounds easy
right. Well anyone who has tried can tell you it is hard. One of the ways a
teacher, or a parent can help children learn to read is to implement word work
strategies on a daily basis.
I would define word work as working
with words on a daily basis in an authentic way. This may be word sorting, word listing, etc.
there are a variety of ways this could happen. Students should do this every
day and when they do it they need to make the lesson become almost automatic. This automaticity helps aid in our learning
because what happens in our brain when we learn something is that new synapsis
fire and new connections are made, and if we don’t reinforce this new knowledge
the connection will get severed and we will forget it. (My apologies for the
simplicity of the last sentence, I know the brain is more complicated but you
get my point) Because we may forget new
information, this is why it is so important to repeat things to students about
letters and reading. And furthermore why it is so important for students to repeatedly
sort words for meaning because that will reinforce the word.
Word work helps student read in a
variety of ways. One way is decoding. A person can only spend so much time and
energy on one thing at a time. Think about, reading is tough, we are taking
weird shapes and assigning them sounds that we’ve all agreed to and somehow we
make meaning out of that. It is easy if you know the sounds and the meaning
behind the sounds, but what if you struggle. You are going to spend all your
time trying to sound out words and you will forget what you are even reading
about in the first place. Is it any wonder some people hate reading.
What word work does is helps
students reinforce phonic sounds and patterns and therefore their reading fluency
can improve. If a student works on the /st/ sound for a few days during word
work in class. They will eventually know how to tackle a word like “crustacean”
or “streamline” more easily than they would by simply trying to sound it
out. Because it is easier for them they
will not need to work as hard and therefore they can read at a faster rate. More
importantly they won’t struggle as much when they read and may enjoy reading
more.
Research Matters:
I know what you are probably
thinking, who are you do make such claims. Well I am not an expert by any
means, but my opinions are based on facts. Three article I’d like to highlight
are: “Developmental-Spelling Research: A Systemic Imperative” by Marcia
Invernizzi and Latisha Hayes, “Word Study Instruction in the K-2Classroom” by
Cheri Williams, with several others and finally “Vocabulary: Questions from the
classroom” by Camille Blachowicz.
In their article “Developmental-Spelling
Research: A Systematic Imperative” Marcia Invernizzi and Latisha Hayes discuss
this at length. It is their work that most of my opinions are formed. Something I found very interesting that they
highlighted was how prevalent word work is now in our education system. They
discuss how “Virtually every teacher’s manual in every major reading series at
least nominally suggest word sorts.” A word
sort is when a student sorts words based on some criteria. You can have
an open sort when students pick the
word or a closed sort where an
instructor gives criteria. They believe
that word sorts aid in helping students learn to spell. Because of the patters
being reinforced and not just a random list of words. The student learns the
phonic pattern and then can apply that knowledge later to new words. This way
of thinking is very different than the old “spelling list” in which students
were forced to memorize a random list of words. They advocate for a systematic approach
to teaching spelling and phonics in their classroom. I feel they can best be
summed up by their statement:
As knowledge of the
phoneme-grapheme relations expands, students begin to acquire many sight words,
and they move into independent reading about the same time they begin to
navigate through the pattern tier of English spelling. The more the students
read, write and learn about the spelling system, the larger their vocabulary
grows. Before you know it, students are learning and remember so many words
that their lexicons abound with words of more than on syllable…
Think about
how powerful of a tool this is for young emergent readers. We can equip them
with the skills necessary to tackle words they’ve never even heard of before! That
is awesome. If you can instill a love of language into children at a young age
think of the implications later in life for that student, not only academically
but also in the real world. In a little
way this helps them tackle problems head on and to relate new things to old
things in order to create meaning. Wow! That is an awesome thought to think
about.
In Cheri
Williams article “Word Study Instruction in the K-2 Classroom” she defines word
study as “an approach to spelling instruction that moves away from a focus on
memorization.” For example “students come to understand that the second vowel
in compose is spelled with an “o” because
it is related to compose” This reinforces
what we’ve been discussing. That this is a movement away from memorizing and
into actually understanding the language. Williams has four approaches to
implementing word study:
1.
Assess Students’ Word Knowledge Using Multiple
Assessment Tools
2.
Use a Homogeneous
Small-Group Approach to Instruction
3.
Carve Out Time to Prepare for Word Study Instruction
4.
Teach Word Knowledge Not Just Words
In my opinion number four is the hardest but most important.
If you can teach student word knowledge they can exceed our expectations. If we
teach them a word list they will memorize it.
Below is an example of a teacher doing word work with two second grade
students:
Video:
Analysis:
Overall
I think this is an okay example. I think that it is good the students are
writing the words down. But I think for overall time it would have been faster
to do a word sort. They could have covered more words. However, some positives
that I saw were her interactions and her accountability of her students. In her interactions with the two students she
stayed on task, it is a small clip but I feel that a rehearsal would have
strengthened this. She did rehearse the sounds a few times with them but not as
a model. As far as accountability is concerned I like that she did not tell the
students the answers. They had to arrive on it on their own. Far too often we
rush through lessons and we never let students learn. They just listen to us
talk. This doesn’t help anyone.
Finally
as a secondary teacher this is a whole new world to me. I don’t carve out time
to teach phonic sounds. But the concepts could be applied to vocabulary words.
In Blachowicz’s article “Vocabulary: Questions from the classroom” she argues
for the use of “new words, wordplay, playful word practice and other techniques
for motivating” and furthermore states that we should have “an emphasis on semantic
relatedness” and that “instruction provides both definitional and contextual
information about words.” This is important
because the core ideas are there. In an AP English class when a new book is
being discussed instead of working from a generic list students could be
involved in authentic word work that would help aid their reading instead of
just regurgitating a word list.
Final thoughts…a “so
what” if you will:
As I stated previously I am
a secondary school teacher and old enough that I never really did this kind of
word work as a student. So when I started researching it I was skeptical. But
upon researching word work and its implication on fluency, spelling etc. I am a
believer. I think word work should be an essential part of every classroom. It
helps prepare students to read on their own, which after all is the goal. We
want our students to take these skills with them the rest of their lives. They can
be in a meeting and say “sorry that wasn’t a vocab word I don’t know what that
means, or how to say it.” We want students that are capable of understand and
manipulating the language so that they can communicate their ideas in ways that
will benefit all of us.
