Week 7: Fluency and Word Study Assignment #3

Explain the three levels of words and how you can use word levels to decide which words to teach:
The first level of words are familiar words. These words are the ones students already know such as run, go, and bed. Because students already have a working knowledge of these words, we do not need to spend instruction time teaching them. The second tier of words are words that appear often in print. These words students may recognize from reading them in the newspaper or seeing them in a text, but may not necessarily know what they mean. Examples of these words are hurricane and democracy, and these are the words we need to be teaching students. The third tier of words are called highly technical words and they are unique to the different content areas such as chemistry and biology. These words we would not cover, the teaching of those words would be left to the domain specific teachers as students move up in grade levels.

How do you teach your students to "chunk" words as a strategy for decoding unfamiliar words. When do you provide this instruction?
Learning to chunk words is the process of breaking a word down to see if there is a part of the word that the students already know. The video we saw had students taking words strips and ripping off the beginning and end to see if they knew what the middle sound meant. If they didn't know that sound, they would rip it in half and see what they knew from there. Then the students would work backwards to put the words back together. After working on this for a few days students would then be able to use their thumb to cover portions of the words instead of ripping them up. After ten days or so, the students in the video were able to read the words without ripping a paper strip or covering with a thumb. They were able to look for root word and find meaning using the root and context clues in the sentence. I would provide this instruction in small group or one on one instruction when students were struggling with the tier 2 words related to the text.


Based on Professor Allington's coments and the classroom examples, what are some ways you might foster word study in your classroom?
Professor Allington discussed similar strategies to the ones in the video where teachers create word walls to give students visual cues. As students come across a word they don't know, they figure out the meaning and add it to the word wall for future reference. With students being active participants and adding the words to the wall themselves, they are more likely to remember the meaning of the word. Word walls are something I will definitely use in my classroom, but would also like to have flashcards with the word and an image on one side for students to use at their desk in case they are visual strength learners and would benefit from having the image as a clue.