February 26, 2009 Meeting

Today we discussed Chapter 3 entitled "Organizing for Word Study: Principles and Practices". This chapter emphasizes that sorting words into categories is the heart of word study. It is based on the premise that categorizing is the way humans make sense of the world. It's the way we find order and identify similarities. Also, word sorting is an active process. It has students search, compare, contrast, and analyze in order to organize and make generalizations about spelling so that they can then apply them to new words. The chapter discusses organization of instruction at length and within this discussion looks at word study as an extension of the Reading Group. This process of sorting spelling words at an appropriate developmental level works well in a Readers' Workshop environment. Our 6th grade teachers, who teach reading in a workshop environment, have established using this approach across the grade level. All students are placed in the appropriate developmental group based on the results of the placement test. Each group meets for 20 minutes daily. So far, the teachers have found this approach to spelling to be beneficial and appropriate for their students. I have been using this approach with students with reading and writing disabilities and not only see success with them in my special education classroom, but often see them generalize their learning to spontaneous writing in the regular class settings. The chapter also discusses 3 basic types of sorts that include sound, pattern, and meaning sorts. Finally, ten principles of word study are given which can be summarized in 4 words "Teaching is not telling (James, 1958)".