Week 7 Assignment 3

There are three levels of words. Familiar words are words that children already know, and we don't need to teach. Other words appear often in print and in daily conversations that do need to be taught; these are words like hurricane and democracy among others. The third level of words are highly technical words; these words are unique to their subjects. The words we do need to teach are second tier words; when we come across these words in students' reading material, we should use the opportunity to teach them.

Chunking is a great way for students to decode difficult words. In my classroom, I have a poster that reads, "Words are like cookies; if it's too big bite off a chunk." I teach students to look for the vowel sound of the word and then find other sounds they can decode. We gradually put the chunks together and reread the word and then the sentence. I provide this instruction during a shared reading activity.

The idea of creating a classroom word wall is great. The teacher and students add words that they've come across while reading to the word wall; they discuss the meanings of these words and where they've come across them. Another great time to work on word study is during shared reading and guided reading; point out the difficult words; ask students what they think it might mean, and use context clues.