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Guest Post

We're guest blogging about Words Their Way over at the Tattooed Teacher today!  Stop by and say hi!

Freebie Game

Earlier this week I was looking through some of our Words Their Way posts and noticed that we gave away the game "Smackdown" but the link to the download was buried in another post and it was hard to find. To make it easier, I'm sharing the game here again.

Smackdown is a slap-jack like card game for two players. The game teaches VCV and VCCV patterns. It coordinates with Words Their Way Syllabiles & Affixes stage (Syllable Juncture).

The download includes directions, the game, and a practice skill sheet.

Click here to download.

Words Their Way--Resource List

I thought it would be nice to have all the Words Their Way resources in one post. I'm also including a link to the sort sequences that I use to organize my binder.

Letter Name Alphabetic sorts
Within Word Pattern sorts
Syllables and Affixes sorts


At the bottom of each "unit" (?) I listed the games I use to reinforce those concepts. Some of the games are in our Etsy shop.
For the Letter/Name Alphabetic stage, we have:

• The R-Express (r blends)
• Welcome to the Neighborhood (short e,o,a word families)
• Cops & Robbers (short vowels)
• Terrific Teeth (ch, th, sh, wh)
• Reindeer Feed (short/long vowel sounds)

For the Within Word Pattern stage there's:

• Double Sound Dominoes (sounds of oo, y, and ow)
• Magic Lamp (sounds of c and g)

Syllables and Affixes:

• Ghosts in the Cemetery (sounds of c and g)
• Bonkers -- FREE DOWNLOAD --(review of vowel patterns in 1 syllable words)
• Smack Down -- FREE DOWNLAOD -- (vcv and vccv patterns)

I give this form for students to take the assessment.


And this form to record their scores.


I keep track of my groups in this book.


There's also a cover here.

If you missed the earlier series on Words Their Way, here are the links.

1. Words Their Way Overview
2. Assessment
3. Organization (Part 2)
4. Word Study

Let me know if there's something you'd like to know more about or a part of Words Their Way you're struggling with. I'm by no means an expert, but I've been doing this long enough that maybe I have a tip or two.

Happy spelling!!

Words Their Way--Record Book

I finally got around to making a new record book for my Words Their Way groups. My last one lasted me several years, but it was finally full. So here's the newbie. I got the cute clipart from Lettering Delights.


I like to keep track of which group is one which level, so I made some easy check-off-the-box type forms. Then I took it all to Staples to get it coil bound.


After I started using this, I realized I was still having to label each group early, middle, or late. So I updated the file to include an e m l under each stage. That way you can just circle which level they're on.

I only have 5 groups (well, 5 groups and 1 little guy who is so low that he's his own group :( ), but I made a page that has 6 groups in case you have a really wide range of abilities in your class.

You can get the pieces here:
cover
5 group record sheet
6 group record sheet

Happy spelling!

Words Their Way--Word Study

Edited to add: There is a more recent post about Words Their Way resources. To view this post, go here.

After all that prep work it’s finally time for the kids to do some learning! With Words Their Way, the focus is on sorting the words. It’s a great way for the children to learn about spelling patterns, but it can be tedious doing it day after day. The book has lots of different sort suggestions and I’ve tried most of them. Over the years my system has evolved, it always seems to be “in-progress,” but this is how it’s been going this year.

Monday—a part of their morning work, the kids glue last week’s sort into their notebooks. In the afternoon they cut out their new sort. They write their initials on the back of each word card and store them all in a zipper pocket.


Tuesday—During morning work, I call each group back to the rug and introduce their sort for the week. They highlight the category cards and one exemplar for each category. I think it helps them remember their categories better. Then they take their words back to their desks to sort and write.


Wednesday—Students sort, draw, and label as part of their morning work.

Thursday—Students sort and graph as part of their morning work. A couple years ago I had a student who HATED word sorts. He invented sort & graph as a shortcut. The students sort their words and then draw a graph in their notebooks. I let them choose what kind of graph
to draw. Sometimes they do tallies, most of them choose bar graphs, and occasionally someone will make a pictograph.


Later in the morning, the kids play a game using the words in their sort or a recent sort. I have files of the games and made enough copies for a group of 8 to play each one. Some of the games come from the WTW book. Most are games I made up. You can find some of them in our Etsy shop (Terrific Teeth, Ghosts in the Cemetery, …) . While the kids play games, I do any assessments.

You can download a free game for your students here (and the rules for playing here). It's a crazy-8 style card game called Bonkers to help practice vowel patterns (CVVC, CVC, CVCe, CVCC) in single syllable words.

Fridays—As part of their morning work, kids look through books to find examples of words that fit their categories.

That’s what works for me these days. I’m sure there will be some tweaking to it next year. There’s no denying that it takes a lot of work to get this program up and running. Some years I haven’t been diligent in following this program and it shows in when my children show a weak understanding of vowels. Even the good spellers don't really understand why words follow particular patterns.

It's been 6 years of trial and error, but Words Their Way has helped me be a better spelling teacher. I love the power of knowing how my children think about spelling. Being able to help them progress as readers and writers is worth all the effort.

Words Their Way--Organization

Edited to add: There is a more recent post about Words Their Way resources. To view this post, go here.

One of the most helpful bits of WTW advice is something I heard in a workshop: do what you can. If you feel like you can manage 8 different groups with weekly reassessments, then go for it. If you only feel ready to take on 2 groups with words sorts every other week, then that’s ok too. Make it work for you!

After testing your students, the next step is to organize them for word study. It works best for me to write the levels down one side of a paper and then list the students next to their level. I decided I could handle 4 groups, so I look for ways to divide up the kids.

That’s the easy part.

Then it comes down to managing this 4-ring circus!

I ended up making a half-sheet form for each week. I cut down some post-it notes and listed the kids for each group. Then I list the sort for each week.


I found that I was spending a significant portion of my planning time on Mondays getting sorts ready for the week. Instead I found some 4-pocket folders and assigned one of the pockets to each of my groups. I put a week’s worth of sorts in each folder and then I’m set for 5 or 6 weeks!


The past few years my school has stocked a filing cabinet with wordsorts so anyone can access what they need.


Before we had the filing cabinet, I made my own sort binder. Using the WTW level books from our school library, I copied each sort onto a yellow sheet of paper (yellow so I don’t lose my master among the copies!). I copied each of the assessments (also from the WTW level books) on pink so I could find them quickly.


Then I organized them in a binder. If the filing cabinet is running low on sorts I still have to make copies, but that’s much less frequent now.

Words Their Way--Assessment

Edited to add: There is a more recent post about Words Their Way resources. To view this post, go here.

ETA: sorry for those of you who tried to download the documents from Google. I've uploaded them to box.net and everything should be working! Sorry about the hassle.

On the last Words Their Way post, Mrs. Ibarra commented:

I have a copy of this book, but our Reading program does word sorts and uses them as spelling words too. It teaches a 2-3 patterns at a time...ay and ai for example. Do you think I could combine the two? I haven't looked at the book in a while. I purchased it for a Graduate class, but really haven't looked at it since.

Mrs. Ibarra, I’m not sure how your reading program is set up, but with Words Their Way instead of doing whole-class sorts, you teach students on their levels. The assessment piece is what I think makes Words Their Way so beneficial.

To start off, you give the class a (lengthy) spelling test. There are a couple of different versions depending on the grade you teach. Since I’ve got 2^nd graders, I use the Primary Spelling Inventory (PSI). On the Pearson website, you can see an example of the different tests and a rundown on how to score them.

Then you get to grade them. I love looking at the data, but I hate doing all the recording. When you’ve got 20+ students, it can take a while. It helps to think happy thoughts. “I only do this 4 times a year…I can watch some Richard Armitage while I grade…”

Each of the words is broken down into key components—beginning sounds, vowel sounds, suffixes, etc. You don’t analyze every part of every word, so you need the feature guide to show you what you’re looking for. You put the student’s test in front of you and start checking off what was written correctly.

The feature guide in the book is horizontal, but I found that it’s easier for me to grade in a hurry if the page is vertical, so I retyped the info on my own form. Also, I like to use the same page for the whole year so I can easily track student growth. I use a different color pen each time I give the test and color the key at the top of the page.

After checking each word, then you total the number of checks in each column. The different columns represent different levels of spelling mastery. Each feature is checked in 7 different words. If a student correctly writes the feature (for example, short vowel sounds) 6 or 7 times you know it has been mastered. If a child gets 5 or fewer correct, that’s considered the student’s level.

If you look at this sheet, you'll see how this student has progressed over the year.

At the beginning of 2nd grade, she misspelled two of the short vowel words. In that column (on the left), I recorded her score in black. If you look at the next column, you can see she got 6 of the features correct. Even though she technically passed that column, I went back to the first level where she missed two or more words to determine her level. In this case, Letter-Name Alphabetic stage. A little low for 2nd grade.

When I gave the test at the end of 1st term (burgundy numbers), she'd mastered the short vowels, digraphs, and blends. But she missed every single one of the long vowel patterns. So I knew her level had moved to middle Within Word pattern stage. This is where most of my 2nd graders fall.

On the third test at the end of 2nd term, she'd mastered long vowels, but not all the vowel patterns like aw, ir, etc. So that's where we're working now.

When my student teacher finishes up, I'll give the assessment again to determine where she should work for the last part of the year. If I'm really feeling motivated I may give the test again at the end of the year to see how far she's grown, but by the end of May my enthusiasm for grading is minimal. :)

The interesting thing about the WTW assessment is that it's as focused on mistakes as it is words spelled correctly. For example, a child that spells goat “gote” obviously can’t spell the word goat. But what the error tells you is that he understands that something has to happen to a vowel to make it long. In this case, the speller knows that silent e often plays a role. So this student is probably going to be in the middle of the Within Word Pattern stage and ready to practice long vowel patterns like ai, oa, ue, etc.

You can download a copy of my version of the feature guide here. This is only for the Primary Spelling Inventory. The upper grades have a different set of words. 

This is a copy of the form that I give my students to write on. I really hate waiting for them to number their papers from 1-26. Plus this way I can do some record keeping right on their forms.

  

 

Words Their Way--Overview

Edited to add: There is a more recent post about Words Their Way resources. To view this post, go here.

For all its craziness, the English language is based on patterns. So it makes sense, when we're teaching little ones to read and write, to focus our instruction on those patterns. That's why I love Words Their Way. It's an assessment based, hands-on approach to teaching spelling.


I really believe in this program, but it is rather tricky to get it up and running. If you're using Words Their Way (I shorten it to WTW) with your class or children, please chime in with your experiences. And if you're considering trying this or frustrated with how it's working for you, maybe something we share this week will help you out.

For the record, here's my background with this program:

• It's encouraged, but not required in my district. Teachers have a lot of autonomy about how they implement.
• I've taken a couple trainings, but most of my know-how came from the book and trial and error.
• My students have a weekly sort, but I don't use it for my spelling words.
• I have the Words Their Way book and my school has a set of the sort books for each level. There are a lot more resources under the WTW umbrella, but I haven't seen any of them.

Check back tomorrow when we tackle the biggest WTW hurdle: organization.

14 Days of Loves: Day 4

We do Words Their Way word sorts everyday. One of the biggest obstacles in implementing this was storing each student's set of 20+ words. Bags and envelopes just end up thrashed and words become floor confetti.

Enter the zipper pocket.

I found them at a back-to-school sale, but even at a discount they were $1 each. The cost almost scared me off, but they've proven to be worth 5 times that!


I've had this class set for several years and they still look really good. They take a lot of abuse and still come through. Yay for zipper pockets!