Primary Word Study

“No Excuse” Words

These lists were developed some years ago by a group of teachers working in conjunction with former Assessment Coordinator, Jan Martin. They are referenced in both the original and revised Todd County Literacy Plan. These words are meant to represent a minimum standard by which we should be able to hold all students accountable for spelling correctly in grades k-3. It is suggested that teachers begin their word wall work with these basic lists and hold students accountable, after introduction and instruction, to spelling these words correctly in ALL drafts and final writing projects. While students may not initially spell every word from memory, all students should be comfortable referencing and using these lists to support themselves when writing independently. Teachers at levels 1-3 will want to include the words previously introduced on their word walls and communicate an expectation for correct spelling of these words early on in the school year, while other words will not become ‘no excuse’ until they are introduced and instructed. Teachers may want to consider using a color coding system with these words, so that they stand out from other words. This will make it possible for children to edit for ‘no excuse’ words more effectively. In constructing word walls, beware of overloading the walls as children who truly need the support offered by a word wall are also those most likely to be overwhelmed by volume.

37 Most Common Chunks

According to a very popular text, if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish...

To work effectively to expand student ability to read and write unfamiliar words is a challenge for any teacher. When a child learns to write a single word, perhaps a word taught traditionally through weekly word study and spelling activities, at best, the child knows one word. When a child is taught common chunks and how to manipulate those chunks, that child has the ability to generate meaningful spellings and apply those strategies to decoding new words. Teachers this past summer were invited to examine the list of 37 most common chunks and make suggestions for introducing those chunks beginning in kindergarten with the hope that each successive teacher (1-2) would review the previously taught chunks as well as introduce new chunks. Teachers are by no means limited to these lists. They are only intended to ensure that primary students are exposed to the 37 most common chunks during their first three years of school.

Some suggestions for chunk study:

1. Daily Cloze-- Each day for a week, give students a cloze sentence and provide them with the chunk. Early in the week, and with more challenging chunks, the cloze should come later in the sentence. Each successive day review the previous day’s sentence through shared reading and introduce a new sentence;

These sentence strips can be displayed in a pocket chart and become an activity during reading the room.

2. Center Activity #1-- By using a bit of leftover laminating film, or cutting up some heavy duty page protectors, you can use a bit of tape to create a see-through pocket on a magnetic tray. Make it large enough to slide in the chunk on a bit of sentence strip and provide magnetic letters so that children may generate words by placing consonants in front of the chunk. Children might be encouraged to record the words they generate into their word study books. Control the difficulty of the activity by limiting available letters. This activity can be adapted for sentence charts by creating consonant cards.

3. Center Activity #2-- Create heavily laminated ‘place mats’ with the chunk written quite largely in the center and provide clay to role and create the initial consonant sounds.

4. Center Activity #3-- Use word to create a template on the computer with the chunk under study at the top of each column (perhaps a column for the new chunk and couple under review). Size font accordingly. When creating the template, it takes only a bit of extra time to set it up so that each word in each of the table frames under each chunk will appear in a different font and a different color. Big thrills can come in small packages! Children can print these out to take home or to paste into their word study books. You will need to teach children to close without saving, or to delete their words before leaving the center.

5. Create a Chunk Wall-- The simplicity of this is that children do not need to have lists of EVERY word that can possibly be generated using these chunks. Instead, it is possible to create a powerful visual anchor by selecting a word, as a class, to add to the the anchor for a particular chunk. After a bit of fun generating a list of words, taking care to acknowledge alternative spellings, invite the class to vote to select an anchor word:

The chunk wall for first grade might begin to look a bit like this.

Notice that the chunks are highlighted in another color, so that a child can quickly pick out the chunk. If a child asks for help with a work like ‘mug’, the teacher can say, “I think that you can find a chunk on the wall to help you with that.” If the child needs a big more support, the teacher might say, “That sounds a lot like a chunk under the letter ‘U’.” It doesn’t matter that this particular child cannot read the word ‘tugboat’, the highlighting and scaffolding provided by the teacher will help the child locate the chunk. Perhaps a bit of the word study books in the classroom can be devoted to the vowels so that newly studied words can be printed on labels (again, highlighting the chunk) and quickly added to each child’s book on an appropriate page.

DOWNLOAD CHUNK STUDY:

Other resources for word study:

Other resources for vocabulary study:

Although this list is far from inclusive, it may provide some additional ideas for word study, including additional word lists and activities. If you are aware of a strong resource not included here, please send a description of the activity along with any photos or documents to support teacher understanding to district literacy coach Lori Jackson. If you are including student photographs, please make sure that your internet permission forms allow us to post the child’s photograph on the web. When sending internet resources, be sure to carefully cut and paste the entire URL so that we can provide working links.

ljackson@tcsdk12.org