Emily Bluth

Word Work Reflection

During the week that my 3
rd
grade class was taking the ELA exam, I was fortunate
enough to be able to spend my mornings visiting Kindergarten, 1
st
grade, and 2
nd
grade
classrooms. Because my placement classroom does not have a Word Wall or do any activities or
lessons around Word Work, I was definitely interested in observing a classroom engaged in this
learning. While observing a 1
st
grade classroom, after Morning Meeting the teacher announced
that it was time for Word Work. I was so excited to see it in action after learning so much about
it during our class.
The teacher gathered her students on the rug and said, Friends, its a new week so you
will be receiving new words! The students were very enthusiastic about this. One by one the
teacher showed a cut out of each new word on the SMARTboard using the document camera.
She had cut the word out and outlined the perimeter of the word in marker to emphasize its
shape. The first word was Bed. The teacher said to her students, Look at this word. What do
you see? One student said there was another word inside of this word (Be) and another student
said there is an -ed sound at the end. The class went on to list several more words they could
make with the -ed ending; If we know bed we know The next word was more. The
teacher showed the word and said, This word ends with a quiet e that makes a vowel say its
sound, and it starts with an m. The students said the word together, spelled it together, and
used it in several sentences. One student even volunteered a definition of what it meant. The next
word was could. The teacher asked, What are some of the things you know about could?
One student said it rhymes with should and would. The class said the word together and
spelled the word together. The next word was help. The teacher asked, Is the vowel in this
word short or long? The class practiced sounding out the vowel sound together (eh not ee)
and one student volunteered a definition for the word. The last word was quiet. The class
spelled it together and said it together; one student noticed that quiet is a describing word and
the teacher referenced a poem about snow that they had recently read, in which the snow falling
was described as being quiet. I really liked that the teacher did not just project the words onto the
screen and ask students to spell them and say them together. I thought that her engagement with
these words was meaningful and it gave students the chance to think deeper about the words,
what they look like, and what they sound like in a more constructive way. Students were
encouraged to make connections between these words and other words that they know of;
students were also making connections between their schema and understanding of these words
prior to learning them this week. The impression I had of this was that the teacher was very
invested in her students getting the most out of Word Work as possible. She explored all of the
students ideas and pushed their thinking about the words as well.
After being introduced to the words as a whole-class, the students picked partners for
their Word Work activity. Each student received a strip of paper with the five new words printed
onto it, which they cut out themselves. Each partnership got a baggie of magnet letters and
together they used the letters to practice spelling out each of their new words.
While observing this lesson, I noticed how organized the teacher is. She has all of the
Word Wall Words used so far cut out, outlined, and sorted into alphabetical Ziploc bags. She
keeps this collection with her while teaching so she can have easy access to words she wants to
practice and review. The teacher also attached a small magnet to each word so that she can stick
it to the whiteboard and the easel during lessons. I noticed that boxing and outlining words is
something consistent across her lessons: during Morning Meeting students came up to box off
different words from the Morning Message. They spelled them as a class and talked about the
heights of different letters. I really liked this strategy and thought it was a very clever way to get
students engaging with various words throughout the day. It provided time for practice and
building familiarity with letter and word sounds, and the shapes that each letter has.
In talking with her afterwards, the teacher said that all week the students explore the five
new words and then on Friday the five new words go up onto the Word Wall. As this happens,
students also practice reading all of the other words that share the same first letter as the new
words. When I asked the teacher how she picked what words she would give the students each
week, she told me she selected them based off of sight words she wanted her students to learn as
well as common words they would see when reading new books together in class. I thought this
was a very clever decision that provided students with the opportunity to not only learn new
words, but to see them actually being used in books. This would help students to understand their
definitions and meanings in many contexts. I was also curious about whether or not this teacher
retired words from her Word Wall, which is something we had discussed as a possibility in
class several weeks ago. This teacher told me that she chose to keep her words up all school year
so students would remember them and continue to recite and practice them.
I am really glad I finally had the opportunity to observe a classroom engaged in Word
Work after learning about it in Literacy class! Although I wish I had more exposure to it in my
own placement, even from just this one observation I was able to identify many clever strategies
that I would want to adopt to use in a classroom. In thinking about my students, I believe that
they would benefit from a word wall. Although they do some work from the Words Their Way
program, many of my students still struggle with spelling words that range in difficulty. A Word
Wall with sight words or a Wall of unit-specific vocabulary terms could work towards a solution
of this.