H & F Ch 8

I really enjoyed reading about the different word knowledge tool kit activities for transitional readers. Children in this stage are moving from the beginning stages of robotic word by word reading to smooth phrasal reading that has expression and intonation.

I wish I would have read this book years ago. There are so many great ideas that I can’t wait to try out in my classroom. The book lists various activities for reading words, writing words, manipulating words, and transferring words. The teacher’s goal for students is to be able to learn more words, understand how words work, and instill a love for learning new words that lasts a lifetime.

The first category discussed in the book is reading words which deals with skills that improve decoding. There were various sort activities in this section. The Guess My Category Word Sort involves the teacher sorting the words, and the students looking at the columns to compare and contrast the words. Students are asked how to focus on how the words look and sound the same in each column, and then verbalize what they see. This type of sort can also include multisyllabic words that also use the same patterns. However, students should not be tested on these words. Another activity discussed was the Concentration matching game. Students take turns turning over cards, while also trying to remember where the matching patterns are. I really like the speed sort activity, and can see my students enjoying this a lot. Students take turns racing to sort the words and record their times on a data sheet. The Hot Seat game is another activity where students race against the clock. One student points to the words, while another student reads the words. A student stops reading and records their score once the words are all read or a miscue is made. Readers are also taught rules to help them decode multisyllabic words by syllables. Time is also spent with strategies that involve using affixes and base words. My favorite one is called, Building Words in which students are given a base word bank and a prefix and/or suffix bank. The students can then create their own words that may not necessarily be words, but force them to show you whether or not they really know the meaning of the affixes because they provide a definition of their made up words.

The second category was writing which focuses on the spelling aspect of words. The first activity mentioned was blind writing sorts. I plan on using this first activity to replace how I currently assess my students in spelling. Like a regular spelling test, the teacher or a student reads the word, uses the word in a sentence, and then reads the word again. However, the students are given header words for each pattern prior to the test. The students then have to not only spell the words correctly, but also sort and write the words under the correct column. The next activity uses the same process as mentioned above except the student or teacher calling out the word reads the definition, and the students then write and sort the words. When spelling unknown words, the teacher can also have students practice writing words by analogy through use of the SOP strategy (sound, other similar words that have the same pattern, and then thinking about pattern rules).

The third category deals with manipulating words to better analyze how the words work. Students engage in word ladder like activities where they are given a word and asked to change parts to make new words. The teacher can also show the words and then show the word again with the missing pattern for students to fill in. The third strategy involves showing students the spelled word while pointing out and discussing the pattern within the words, then mixing up the letters or letter tiles, and asking the student to spell the word again while thinking about the pattern.

The fourth category involves the students transferring their word knowledge into the contexts of reading and writing. The first strategy involves having the students write their own piece and completing a word hunt during the edit phase of the writing process. Students are given an editing chart with patterns that they’ve learned throughout the year. If a student finds a misspelled word, they can use the pattern chart to rewrite the word in the correct way. The students can also look for words they spelled correctly and add those to their charts as well. This section also mentioned the effectiveness of having your students create their own “big picture” graphic organizer for the different sounds and patterns. These can be kept in journals as well as around the room for students to reference when writing.

The end of this chapter also provided the teacher with ways to help a student that doesn’t understand a word. Overall the big theme of this section was time. The teacher shouldn’t always rush to tell students what a word is. Instead they should allow them time to tackle the word independently. If a student has a miscue that changes the meaning of the text, the teacher can allow the student time to read on, and see if they go back and self correct after reading more of the text. If the student does not go back, the teacher can repeat what the student read and ask him/her if it sounds right.

These strategies and activities will later help students to tackle increasingly more difficult texts in later grades as they learn to think more critically about words when reading and writing independently.