Word Study At A Glance

Coming home in your child's Beaver Folder tonight is their first "Word Study Challenge".  Please review the assessment with your child and return it by Friday, September 26.  As Word Study may be new to many parents, attached to the assessment is a paper outline Word Study, its purpose, and the research that supports this instruction and learning.  At the bottom of today's post, you'll find a copy of the "Word Study At A Glance".

In Math Workshop, students used what they new about money and cents' values to solve real world problems.  Every day in Math Workshop, students use words, pictures, and numbers to explain their thinking.  This, in extension, makes their thinking and learning visible to me and more concrete for them, solidifying their knowledge.  Students have a review coming home today, due Tuesday.  Students know to only complete the problems that are starred.

In Writers' Workshop, I modeled how authors use text maps as an outline, to help them write their personal narratives.  During independent practice, students used their text maps to help them begin or continue their narratives.

In Word Study, students applied their knowledge of the "If the root words ends in Consonant-y, change it to an i, when adding a suffix" to help them spell words in the past tense, and sort words based on their phonetic similarities.

In Readers' Workshop, students took on more responsibility regarding identifying character dialogue, and then using this dialogue to infer and grow ideas about how characters are on the inside (their character traits).  Look below to see how we use our readers' notebooks to help us critically think about characters.

In Read Aloud, we payed closed attention to character speaking to help us grow more ideas about our main characters, William and Igor.

In Social Studies, we continued to use our close reading strategies to help us comprehend Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have A Dream Speech".  We used what we learned through this speech to infer and explain ideas of citizenship and patriotism.

Homework:

• Math review, due Tuesday
• Read 20 minutes  

Reminders:

• Unit 1 Math Test: Tuesday, September 23.
• No school Thursday, September 25.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Ms. Smith

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Word Study At A Glance

What is Word Study?

Word study is a learner-centered, conceptual approach to phonics, spelling, word recognition, and vocabulary instruction.  Through active exploration, word study teaches students to examine words and discover specific regularities, patterns, letter relationships, etc.  In addition, word study also increases word knowledge--spelling and meaning, or vocabulary.  Research shows that the number one indicator of reading achievement and growth is a student’s depth of vocabulary.

• Word study isn’t about memorizing spelling words but about understanding spelling patterns.
• Word study encourages students to manipulate groups of words and compare them to words that are phonetically similar.
• Word study is a research-based, purposeful look at word analysis.

Purpose of Word Study

As a component of balanced literacy, word study achieves two goals; first to help students become fluent readers with a strong vocabulary, and secondly, to give students the opportunity to fully explore and manipulate words.

How Does Word Study Work?

Through discovery and exploration, students notice specific letter patterns and concepts in the spelling of words.   Word study involves problem solving in the form of developing hypotheses, searching for patterns, predicting outcomes, and experimenting to find out if they’re right.  Using hands-on, engaging lessons, students compare new words to words they already know and look for similarities.  Through word study, students use and apply what they discovered about letter relationships, patterns, etc. to spell words they may be unfamiliar with.  

The basis of word study works toward current research that indicates when students build on their prior knowledge to construct new learning and have ownership in that learning (i.e. when they create knowledge themselves rather than being explicitly taught by a teacher), they are more likely to retain and apply their knowledge across time and subject areas.  Furthermore, ownership yields a significant conceptual, critical understanding of language, and fosters a real world application of knowledge.