Word Study

Word Study

Children will have two options for independent word study:

1. Word study drawers
2. Matching cards

Word Study Drawers

(Sorry about the picture quality...I really have to buy a camera instead of using my cell phone)

I have 2 sets of 3-drawer sterelite storage containers for word study drawers.  When working in word study drawers, students will use various materials to practice building their weekly words.  These weekly words will be a combination of high frequency words and words with the phonics pattern that they're currently working on.  When they choose this job, children will carry the entire drawer to their chosen workspace.  Each drawer contains three different materials, which will allow students to continue word-building for the entire working session.  Drawers are clearly labeled with the materials:

• magnetic letters
• letter stamps
• black beans
• play-dough
• markers
• dry erase boards
• pipe cleaners

Here are the icons that I used to label the word study drawers.  Each row shows the three materials that will be found in each drawer:

Matching Cards

While students will generally work in the word study drawers during working with words time, they will also sometimes work with matching cards.

I plan on having 2 different types of matching cards.  The first will be wordless pre-reading matching cards and the second will be phonetic matching cards.  The phonetic matching cards will only be useful in French or French Immersion classes, of course!

Pre-reading Matching Cards

Wordless sequencing and association cards are pre-reading activities that, while not technically word study, I plan on incorporating into the working on words part of the literacy block at the beginning of the year.  They require critical thinking on the part of the students as they use their schema to study the pictures and infer which ones go together. I have 2 commercially made self-correcting sequencing puzzles that I purchased through Scholastic.  I won't put the full box out.  Instead, I'll break them into smaller sets and put a few out at a time.

I also have several sets of association cards that I made, all of which are attached as PDFs.  These are wordless, and therefore appropriate for classrooms in any language.  The first three sets are simple idea-idea associations (for example: bird and nest, hand and glove, pencil and paper).  The fourth set is a before-after association between source and food (for example: orange and juice, chicken and egg, apple and pie).

I plan on matting each half of a set on a different colour.  That way students begin by lining up all of the cards with one colour (for example, red).  Then they take the other cards (for example, blue), turn them over one at a time and decide which card is its match.

Phonetic Matching Cards

I'm not sure how many French Immersion teachers are going to see this, but I know from experience that there is so little French material available online, so hopefully this will help someone.  While I've used a variety of phonics approaches in the past (Lire en criant cisaux; le Manuel phonique; Ratus), I've always found that the earliest words introduced rely too heavily on sounds that haven't been learned yet.  Out of all of them, Ratus is probably my favourite, since it's fun and the kids love it so much.  I still plan on incorporating the stories from Ratus and Lire en criant cisaux into my shared reading.

But when it comes to introducing sounds, I've recently found an interesting resource from France called Bien lire, bien écrire by Dr. Ghislaine Wettstein-Badour.  The book is aimed at parents teaching their own children how to read.  It is a purely phonetic approach to teaching reading, where each word that a child is exposed to includes only sounds that they've already been explicity taught.  While the approach itself is quite strict, I'm not planning on using it exactly as outlined in the book.  If I were teaching a small group of struggling readers or tutoring an individual child, I might follow the book as is, but it's really not meant to be used in a classroom.  I'm planning on adapting it and incorporating it as one part of a balanced literacy program. 

The following matching cards are based on the word lists in the book.  They are purely phonetic, with each set building on the last.  The matching cards can be used once all simple one-vowel sounds (including accented vowels) have been introduced.  Of course, in a second language class, students would also have to be taught the vocabulary.  So far I only have a few sets of cards made up.  Once I've had a chance to evaluate how they're working, I'll create more throughout the year.  I plan on making the cards self-correcting by printing the correct word(s) onto the backs of the picture cards.

For now, I'll post the three first sets.  I probably won't bother uploading any more cards to the site unless I know that people are using them.  If you're interested in the cards please send me an email and I'll post them to the site as I create them.

 BACK TO LITERACY