Word Work using Words Their Way:
Children every day are learning about words and how they are structured and understood. Word work can and should be used in elementary classrooms as children are still developing their theories about words and letter sound correlations. This type of work greatly benefits children, because they are able to be explicitly taught about the mechanics behind words and letters and how to put letters together to make certain sounds. I am a huge advocate for Words their Way. I used this mainly last semester in my Kindergarten classroom. I saw enormous growth from my most struggling readers. With the help of differentiated word sorts and word work, my students move from different stages in the Words their Way approach. This helps support the students individual needs and pushes them toward success by teaching exactly what they are struggling with.
Evidence 1: Words their Way word sorts and Letter, Word, Picture and Sentence sort
One-on-one tutoring with a Kindergarten child allowed me to experience and try a variety of different types of word work. The child and I practiced word features she had been struggling with (based on a Primary Spelling Inventory I administered), such as print concepts, word concepts and letter sound correspondence. I taught all of these phonemic skills through word and picture sorts and word work games. In the first image, my student would sort words according to what sound they hear at the beginning of the word. This was also a type of assessment for me, because then I knew which of the letter sounds she was struggling with. Since she was in the Emergent stage (Pre-A) she was learning concepts about print as well. In the second image there is an example of what one of our Picture, Word, Letter and Sentence sorts would look like. My student would sort the cards into different categories and this would lead to authentic discussion about what features make something a sentence (word, letter, picture).
Letter, Word, Sentence and Picture Sort
Evidence 2:
Here is a game that I had made for my students when they were working on long vowel words.
Alyssa Huth 