Words Our Way

Presented By: Rebecca Cash (Lincoln Co. Schools) Anna Collins (Boyle Co. Schools)

Differentiated Word Study and Spelling within our 3rd Grade Classrooms

Got Questions? Presenters’ emails will be listed on the last slide of this presentation.

Long Term Instructional Goals● Students will have a stronger phonemic understanding of the spelling

continuum of the English language, as it progresses from Emergent to Derivational Reading.

● Students will use phonology, morphology, orthography and even etymology to develop a deeper understanding of how words are built.

● We will use effective, differentiated word study instruction to establish where students’ capabilities are, build skills in the students’ weak areas, and capitalize on their strengths.

● We will mesh together word study and spelling instruction to create a multi-dimensional, personalized approach that will allow the students to gain a deeper understanding that goes beyond a weekly spelling test.

Differentiated Word WorkWhy Differentiated Word Work?

“Imagine taking a driver’s education course that doesn’t require driving a car. Learning the rules of the road is important, but learning how to use the brake, steering wheel, and accelerator is more important. It’s the same with word study and phonics. No matter how dedicated we teachers are to teaching both, students still need to “get behind the wheel” and use their word study and phonics skills in strategic ways while reading and writing” ~Jan Richardson’s The Next Step Forward in Word Study and Phonics

Components of a Strong Word Study Program● Learn letter/sound relationships to blend short

sounds● Analyze letter/sound relationships in known words

and apply these relationships to new words● Use known words to read unknown words● Hear and record sounds in words during writing● Discover and learn letter/sound relationships● Learn to break words at the onset and rime to

decode words

*I use Jan Richardson’s The Next Step Forward in Word Study and Phonics to guide my differentiated word study.

Resources needed for Differentiated Word Study● The Next Step Forward in

Word Study and Phonics● Small group set of white

boards/markers● Small group set of magnetic

letters on trays● Picture Sorting cards ● Copies of Sound Boxes and

Analogy charts

Steps to Implement Differentiated Word Study● Administer Word Knowledge Inventory 3 times a year as

baseline formative assessments● Analyze phonetic mistakes to group students into leveled

groups○ 3-5 small groups

● Determine with which Jan Richardson Word Study level and lesson to begin

● Meet with each group 2-3 times a week for ~5 minutes

**Can be tacked onto the end of a guided reading lesson, but I found that my students’ word study needs don’t completely match up with my guided reading levels, so I pull word study groups during “Read to Self”.

Word Knowledge Inventory● Administer the Word

Knowledge Inventory whole-group.

● Analyze each students’ mistakes for phonetic misunderstandings.

● Group students with similar needs○ I have 5 groups, ranging from

short vowel needs to “level Z” Greek/Latin roots

● The first “category” with two mistakes is where to start!

General Progression of Activities From Early-Fluent (A-Z) ● Picture Sorting● Making Words with magnetic letters● Sound Boxes● Analogy Charts● Making a Big Word with magnetic letters● Writing Big Words● Making/writing Affix words

Example page from Jan Richardson’s Word Study book

Example Activities

Sound Picture Sorts Sound Boxes Building words with magnetic letters

“End of level” formative assessment

Differentiated SpellingWhy Differentiated Spelling?

See if any of this sounds familiar. On Monday, students take a spelling pretest on the 20 spelling words provided by some boxed curriculum. Some students get all of the words correct, and now know they can check out for the week. others miss almost every word, and are left feeling like there’s no way they can succeed. Tuesday through Thursday follow with an assortment of worksheets. Then on Friday, the same test is given, this time for a grade.

Differentiated Spelling Students are given three assessments at the beginning

of the school year.

● Word Knowledge Inventory- Jan Richardson ● PAST ● Core Phonics

Once these assessments have been given, data is reviewed and organized, students are placed in Spelling Groups based on the results of the assessments

Areas where students have skill gaps are where they will spend the majority of their learning time.

Differentiated SpellingSample Weekly Schedule

Monday- Students are provided their spelling list,based on their mastery of skills using the PAST and Core Phonics Assessment. Each student receives a sorting mat that follows the skill/spelling pattern for the week.

Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday- Students have center time to use several word work strategies to practice their spelling words

Friday- Students take their spelling test on Google Classroom (there are generally 5-8 students per spelling list group, so there are not that many spelling test that have to be generated.

Major Successes with Differentiated Word Study● Jan Richardson’s Word Study and Phonics model is SO teacher friendly.

Administoring word knowlege assessments, figuring out my students’ starting levels, and carrying out the lessons was very straight forward and fruitful.

● I made a weekly schedule to meet with each group 3 times in a week (1 lesson each day).

● I saw a huge improvement in my students’ ability to hear word parts. Through intentional activities, students were not only gaining skills at their level, but transitioning that to their writing.

● Their ability to more naturally hear and chunk words into their sounds came from intentional, consistant word study activities.

● End of level formative assessments showed that they were learning and grasping phonetic skills being taught!

Major Successes with Differentiated Spelling● Anytime you are able to differentiate instruction you are able to meet your

students where they are and move them to where they need to be. By using this in my classroom, I was able to move both my higher leveled students as well as my lower leveled students.

● Differentiated Spelling gave all of my students the opportunity to find success with spelling work. When we first began using differentiated spelling lists, the student’s grades improved tremendously. Knowing that they had different words, helped to motivate several students in that they wanted to be moved into higher spelling/word work groups which made them work harder to master those phonics skills.

Challenges with Differentiated Word Study● Finding time to meet with 5 differentiated Word Work groups in addition to 5

differentiated Guided Reading groups was challenging, since the group makeups weren’t identical. ○ Pulling groups for 5-6 minutes during Read to Self time M-TH was what I came up with,

though not ideal.○ Because of this, I could only conference with students on Read to Self books on Friday.

● I had such drastically different needs within my 3rd class. I had students who were working on sorting short vowel sounds (level C), and some that were chunking “big” words into prefix, root word, and suffix to define its meaning and use it in a sentence (levels X-Z).

Challenges with Differentiated Spelling● TIME- that is the biggest challenge with using differentiated spelling words

is finding time. Time to assess kids and get them on a level, time to work out ELA block schedules, time to make 9 different spelling list weekly, and time to give 9 different spelling test weekly. Yes, it is time consuming, but the results are so worth the challenge.

Future Ideas● I want to be intentional about starting my Word Work group schedule earlier

in the year. I want to maximize my opportunities to reach the students at their level!

● I want to be more intentional about finding the best time in the day to pull my Word Work groups.

● I want to better integrate their word work skills they are practicing in my small group lessons into their independent Daily 5 choices, as well as Quick Writes.

Lasting BenefitAs students spend time working with the skills that strengthen their specific phonetic needs, both their reading and writing skills will improve. Students will have a better understanding of the way our words are built, and will have tools to better decode and spell in the future.

Got Questions?We’d love to answer any specific questions you all may have regarding implementing differentiated word work and spelling into your Literacy Block. It may seem like an intimidating step to take, but we promise it is worth it!

anna.collins@boyle.kyschools.us

rebecca.cash@lincoln.kyschools.us