Our Word Wall is an important tool in our classroom. Each week, we will learn and add five new words to the word wall. We'll watch it grow over the year with students' names, sight words, transfer words, contractions, multi-syllabic words, and more. The children learn how to use the word wall early on as they begin referring to it when reading and writing.
Sight Words are very common (or high-frequency) words, often with irregular spelling patterns. Because these words have unpredictable letters and sounds, the children must learn to recognize them and spell them "by sight." These are words we attempt spelling and then ask ourselves, "Does that look right?"
Power Words, on the other hand, have predictable spelling patterns (or "power parts," as I call them) that give the word the power to transfer to other words. The "power part" begins at the first vowel and goes to the end of the word. For example, the "power part" in the word like is ike. Children will learn a self-talk strategy that sounds like this: "If I can spell like, then I can spell bike, hike, and spike." When children can isolate and learn the spelling patterns in words, they can begin to easily spell other words that rhyme with that word... and that is a very powerful thing to know how to do.
Sight words and transfer words will make up the bulk of the word wall this year. On our blog, I'll keep an updated list of the five new words we're working on each week, along with a cumulative list of all the words we've learned so far. There will be more than 100 words on the word wall before the year is over... WOW!
Please make sure your child is practicing these words throughout the week. This week, all the words are "Chunky Challenges," or words made from multiple power parts the children already know from the words they've learned all year long. For example: Because the children know how to spell all and day, they should be able to spell hallway. Because they know how to spell fun, wish, and went, they should be able to spell punishment. Please help your child practice these words for Friday and help them understand the connection between the smaller words they already know and the bigger words they can build with those power parts.
{Week of May 19th}
{Cumulative List}
Have fun and help your child practice word wall words (new AND OLD) with inexpensive puzzles from The Dollar Tree. This weekend, I found these superhero puzzles at The Dollar Tree (on US 301). Since they fit right in with our theme, I picked up several, but for all you families out there with daughters, they also had plenty of princess puzzles and, of course everyone's favorites, Mickey and Minnie... a little something for everyone. :)
You can do all sorts of things with a cheap $1.00 puzzle. Here are two ideas you can do easily at home:
1. Program each empty space with a word wall. Focus on words your child consistently misspells or misreads. The more your child practices his or her difficult words, the greater the chances of it becoming automatically remembered. (Throw in a few simple words, too. The easy ones help your child understand what "automaticity" or instant recognition feels like.) Then, on the back of each corresponding piece, scramble up the letters from the word wall word. Challenge your child to look carefully at the letters and rearrange them mentally to form a real word wall word. Please know, some children will not be able to do this exercise mentally and may benefit from writing it down on paper or from manipulating magnet letters, so have those on hand if needed. Make sure your child reads each word before placing the piece back into the puzzle.
2. This idea is the same as the idea above except a letter has been removed from each word wall word and your child must figure out which letter is missing from each word. Again, make sure your child is reading the words as the puzzle is being assembled.
It would be easy to adapt these ideas to support math instruction, too. What creative ideas can you share?
what are those types of puzzles called?
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