When Heidi and I were both teaching 2nd grade, we had a dream. We had a dream of THE IDEAL WORD STUDY PROGRAM. We both feel like we had some really solid practices in place for teaching phonics and spelling. But we had complaints about our cobbled together word study program: It never quite seemed…
words their way
Christmas Consonant Blends
We’re back again with some adorable Christmas literacy centers. This time we’re tackling consonant blends : s blends, l blends, and r blends. These centers are a fun and seasonal compliment to our phonics program. Word Play Phonics for 1st and 2nd grade is a differentiated word study program that incorporates weekly word sorting, chunk spelling, phonics…
1 Easy Trick to Simplify Word Sorting
Aren’t we all looking for a way to simplify the management of 25+ students and all their little word sort cards each week? A reader told us this tip a few years ago and we couldn’t believe how simple and easy it was. It’s a CRAYON. Here’s what you do… Buy a big box of Crayola Crayons. At…
A Teacher’s Guide to Words Their Way
If you’ve visited our blog before, you know that we are big fans of Words Their Way (shortened to WTW). This is an assessment-based, differentiated, leveled approach to spelling and word work. Here’s a little background on our experience with the WTW program: It’s encouraged, not required in our district. Teachers can implement the program…
“Chunk” Spelling
Spelling is one of those things that EVERYONE has an opinion about and very few people agree on. I think that the best way to learn how to spell is to spend extensive time reading and writing. I also believe that a weekly word list has very little carryover into written work. That being said,…
