Yesterday I was working with some grades 3-5 teachers and a 5th grade teacher asked if it is necessary for her to have a word wall.  That led us into a discussion about using personal word walls with those students who still need this support.  Click here to read about one way to use a personal word wall and to download a reproducible for your students’ writer’s notebooks or journals.

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In my last blogpost I shared some word family cards that you can use to help students learn the 37 most common phonograms (rimes, chunks).  Today I am providing some more downloadable word cards.  This is a set of the 150 Most Frequent Words.  These are words that account for a large percentage of words in print but often have irregular spelling patterns.  Click here for more information and to download these cards.

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On another note, I wanted to let you know that I have posted my schedule for upcoming BER seminars that are open to the public.  Click here for a list of cities where I will present during the 2011-2012 school year.  In addition to these public seminars, I also present workshops and lead professional development for schools and districts across the country.  Feel free to contact me for more information.

Did you know that:

• only 13 words (a, and, for, he, is, in, it, of, that, the, to, was, you) account for 25% of the words in print?
• 100 words account for approximately 50%?
• 250 words make up 70-75% of all the words children use in their writing?

                                                —from Phonics from A to Z by Wiley Blevins

These statistics make it very clear that we must help students master these high-frequency words if they are to become fluent readers and writers.  Because most of these words are irregularly spelled, they cannot be taught the same way we teach words that contain phonograms or word families.  Children need repeated exposure to these words so that they can acquire a visual memory for them.  In some previous articles, I have shared the following effective techniques:

• Spelling Flip Folder
• Word Wall "Bobs"

I would like to share another tool that you might find helpful.  These are high-frequency word cards.

Here is what I do: I give each student who hasn’t mastered the 150 Most Frequent Words a packet of cards attached to a 1-inch loose leaf ring.  Each card contains twelve high-frequency words. Students keep their word cards in their individual book bags or bins and practice reading them whenever they have a few minutes during the day. When students come to the guided reading table, they select a card/s to read to me. If they can read every word on the card quickly without hesitation, I stamp the card. If they stumble on a word, I put a dot by the word and tell them to keep practicing. I require them to earn stamps on each card at least two times (on different days) before I consider the card to be mastered. They keep practicing the word cards until all have been mastered.

To make the High-Frequency Word Cards for your students, follow these steps:

1. Download and print the following document onto cardstock. 
   
   High-Frequency Word Cards

2. Cut each sheet into six sections.
3. Punch a hole in each card.
4. Place cards on a 1” looseleaf ring.

   

You may also be interested in word cards for Word Families.

Word walls are great tools for teaching vocabulary, high-frequency words, and word patterns.  It is often a challenge to get students to use these tools, however.  "Word Wall Bobs" provide great opportunities for students to have repeated exposure to the words on our word walls and for encouraging students to use them independently.

Some children still struggle, however, to use the word wall as a resource for spelling in their daily writing because they can’t make the transfer from the wall to their papers.  If you have students who have difficulty making this transfer, you might want to try using a personal word wall.  Here is one that I created for some students this year:

How it works:

1. Photocopy the form above onto 8 1/2” x 11”cardstock.
2. Cut off the right edge.  (This makes it the perfect size to use in a standard composition notebook).
3. Tape the lower half into the inside back cover of the student’s notebook.

   

4. Fold on the line so that the sheet is hidden when the notebook is closed.

   

5. When students misspell high frequency words in their daily writing, add or have them add the words to their personal lists.
6. When they are writing in their writer’s notebooks, encourage them to flip the card up so that it is visible while they write. 

   

I have my students create individualized spelling lists which are based on pattern words and on words they misspell in their daily writing, so this tool is also a great way to collect those words for their spelling lists.  You can read more about individualized spelling lists in these articles:

Spelling Workshop

Green Pen Words

I recently presented a workshop on spelling strategies to some 1st and 2nd grade teachers in Dallas and Kansas City. Part of the discussion focused on the importance of using onset and rimes in our word study instruction. A few teachers asked for a copy of my word family cards, so I decided they might be helpful to all of you, too.  Click here to read more about onsets and rimes and to download a set of FREE word family cards for the 37 most common rimes.

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Follow the link at the bottom of this post for some FREE downloadable word family cards that you can use to help your primary students learn some basic phonics patterns.

First, a quick review:

What are onsets and rimes?

An onset is the consonant(s) before the vowel(s) in a syllable:

/m/ in mind
/str/ in street

Not all syllables have an onset (it and and do not have onsets).

A rime (A.K.A. a phonogram) is the first vowel in a syllable and whatever follows:

/ind/ in mind
/eet/ in street

All syllables have a rime.

Why should we use them in our word study instruction?

Onsets and rimes are important because:

• they are the most psychologically accessible units of sound that may be mapped to a spelling pattern (Goswami, 1996).
• rimes (also referred to as phonograms, chunks, or word families) are very consistent and reliable.
• they can be used to teach children to decode by analogy by using a word they already know to figure out a word they don’t know (this is the strategy used by adult fluent readers).
• about 500 easy to read, high frequency words can be derived from only 37 rimes (Wylie and Durrell, 1970).

Did you know that the chunk –ight can be used to spell over 90 English words?

What are the 37 most common rimes?

How do we use them?

One way is with word family cards. Here is what I do: I give each student who hasn’t mastered the word patterns a packet of cards attached to a 1-inch loose leaf ring.  Each card contains a different word family (a list of words all containing the same word chunk/phonogram/rime). Students keep their word cards in their individual book bags or bins and practice reading them whenever they have a few minutes during the day. When students come to the guided reading table, they select a card/s to read to me. If they can read every word on the card quickly without hesitating to decode, I stamp the card. If they stumble on a word, I put a dot by the word and tell them to keep practicing. I require them to earn stamps on each card at least two times (on different days) before I consider the card to be mastered. They keep practicing the word cards until all have been mastered.

To make Word Family Cards for your students, follow these steps:

1. Download and print the following document onto cardstock. 
Download Word Family Cards

2. Cut each sheet into six sections.
3. Punch a hole in each card.
4. Place cards on a 1” looseleaf ring.

A Word of Caution

Word family lists can be a valuable part of our phonics instruction, but they should never be considered the sole focus.  While the phonograms do introduce our students to some highly reliable word patterns, they do not allow students to fully analyze words in their entirety. (Blevins, 2006)

Recommended Resource

This book has been an invaluable resource to me:

It contains a wealth of information for any K-3 teacher who wants to improve his/her phonemic awareness and phonics instruction.  Included are ready-to-use assessments, word lists, background information, teaching strategies, games, and more!  For samples from this book click here.

Yesterday I wrote about a question many of our students ask us when they are writing:  “How do you spell…?”  I also shared some insights on invented/temporary spelling and ways to encourage our children not to rely on us when they are drafting.  That made me think of another issue this question raises.  What do you do when a parent or an administrator questions a teaching practice that you know is best for children?  What would you say if a parent said, “My child brings home stories she’s written that are full of spelling errors.  She spells words the way they sound.  You didn’t write any corrections on her paper so she’s being taught bad habits.  Why not make her copy words over and over until she gets them right?”  Even if you know what you are doing is developmentally appropriate for this child, would you know how to respond to her parent?

I love what Debbie Miller says in the first chapter of Reading with Meaning.  She writes, “When we know the theory behind our work, when our practices match what we believe, and when we clearly articulate what we do and why we do it, people listen.”  To me, that is a call to become knowledgeable about every decision we make in our classrooms.  We no longer have the luxury of doing something “just because”.  Every act in our classrooms needs to be intentional, and we need to know why we do what we do.  This leads me to a resource I would like to highly recommend to you.  It’s called Smart Answers to Tough Questions by Elaine Garan.

In this book Elaine tackles 20 tough literacy questions we are often asked.  Each chapter follows this format:

• “The Tough Question”: This is a question often asked by parents or the public about various literacy issues.
• “Your Bottom-Line Answer”: This section gives a straightforward answer to the question.  This is the “why I do what I do” explanation.
• “Something for You to Thank and Talk About”: This section goes more in depth and helps refine the bottom-line answer.  These are great topics for whole staff professional development discussions.
• “The Proof”: This is a summary of relevant research, including quotes, websites, journal articles, and more for those who want to become even more knowledgeable about a topic.

I believe this book is a must-have for all elementary literacy teachers.  It is a quick, easy read.  Because it is organized around the tough questions, you don’t have to read the book in order—just flip to the desired chapter (using the convenient side “tabs”) and the answers will be at your fingertips.  I take this book with me to every workshop I present because almost every time, one of these questions comes up in a discussion.

If you teach young children, you probably hear this question on an almost-daily basis.  I am often asked by teachers, “What do you do when children refuse to write unless they know the correct spelling?”  This is a really important question that I will attempt to answer here.  First, let me remind you of the importance of encouraging children to “sound out” or “invent” the spellings of words they don’t know.  According to expert spelling researcher Richard Gentry,  the practice of inventing spelling leads children to consciously try to hear the sounds in words so they can match letters to the sounds. Invented spelling is an excellent way to further develop phonemic awareness (Gentry, 2000) which we know is critical for early reading success. Research shows that invented spelling can have a positive effect on helping children develop as spellers and writers but also as readers. Spelling ability fosters word recognition by enabling a letter-sound association storage of words in memory (Gentry, 1997).

I was once in a kindergarten classroom looking over the students’ writing journals and was alarmed to see every single child’s journal neatly printed with no spelling or punctuation errors.  I decided to stay and observe what was happening during writing time.  This is how it went: the children were told to think of a story and draw a picture to go with it.  (So far, so good).  Then the teacher went around the room and asked each child to dictate his/her story while she wrote it down on a separate piece of paper.  The children were then instructed to recopy the story using only the correct spelling and punctuation.  Never once were the children given the opportunity to say the words, stretch them out, and listen for the sounds in the words.  I really believe that we are robbing our students of important literacy opportunities when we don’t allow them to struggle through this process a bit.  We are also teaching them to be dependent on adults in order to write and that conventions are more important than ideas. 

So we know that we shouldn’t just hand out the correct spelling to children every time they ask, but what do we do about it?  For some children, telling them to “just use your very best first-grade spelling” is enough.  Many other children will not be satisfied with this suggestion, so here are a few techniques you might try:

Magic Lines
I first read about “magic lines” in Lola Schaefer’s Teaching Young Writers: Strategies That Work. This technique helps young writers remember to leave spaces between words. It also helps emerging writers separate the text into manageable units that they are then able to “stretch out” and attempt to spell. Begin by having the student decide on a sentence of text. Then have him count the number of words in the text on his fingers. Next have the student draw the appropriate number of lines on the paper—one line for each word. Once the lines are drawn, the child may begin stretching out the sounds in the words and writing them on the magic lines. Even if they can only hear the first letter, they feel like they are beginning to write words.  Below are some samples from Schaefer’s book (click to enlarge).  As you can see, this helps children move through the developmental spelling stages.  Once they no longer need this tool, the lines begin to disappear.

I’m Not Afraid of My Words
Many children have rich speaking vocabularies, but because they can’t spell these words yet, they “play it safe” and only include in their written stories the words they know how to spell correctly.  This ritual called “I’m Not Afraid of My Words”, developed by Lisa Cleavland and described in About the Authors: Writing Workshop with Our Youngest Writers by Katie Wood Ray and Lisa Cleavland, encourages children to take risks with their writing and celebrates their approximations.  When a child attempts a difficult word, s/he gets to write his/her name on the chart (see below).  The teacher writes the child’s spelling and the conventional spelling.  Take a look at the last word on the chart.  This first-grader was attempting to write “sea anemone”.  Notice the “kne” at the end of the word.  He was spelling by analogy because he knew that the “n” sound in “knee” is spelled with a “kn”.  That’s some pretty sophisticated spelling for a first-grader, if you ask me!

Turtle Talk
This is a strategy you can teach your young spellers to help them slow down a word to hear more sounds.  Tell them to “talk like a turtle”, saying the word very slowly and stretching it out so that they can hear each sound.   Then have them write just the sounds they hear.  Don’t worry if they don’t spell the word conventionally yet.  This is a great way to build their phonemic awareness.

Here are links to a few more articles on my website that provide strategies for empowering our young writers:

• Have-a-Go at Spelling
• Spelling Survival Sheets
• What Good Spellers Do

I hope these strategies will help your student writers become more independent when attempting to spell words they don’t know.

Resources referenced in this article:

Children progress through spelling stages on their literacy journey.  Richard Gentry lists these five stages of development:

Stage 1 – Precommunicative

Stage 2 – Semiphonetic

Stage 3 – Phonetic

Stage 4 – Transitional

Stage 5 – Conventional

Follow this link to read more about these developmental spelling stages.

Richard Gentry developed an inventory, sometimes called the “monster test”, which is a quick and effective way to determine a child’s developmental spelling stage.  For complete directions and other resources follow the links below.

Directions for Developmental Spelling Assessment