Words Their Way

Once a cycle, we work on a program called Words Their Way (WTW). WTW is a word study program that focuses on phonics, vocabulary, and spelling instruction. Throughout this program, students will gain understanding of why English words are spelled as they are, obtain new vocabulary and extend what they have learned about some words to think about other words that fit in the same categories. 

With wonderful support from Mrs. Patzer and Mrs. Danyluk, we work on a new set of words each week, sometimes in whole group lessons and sometimes in small groups. Students sort their word list into particular categories, they record them in their WTW duotangs, we think about what words we know and what words we are not familiar with, we discuss in partners about the meaning of some of the words, and we have an exit slip of some kind, that involves students thinking about additional vocabulary words for each category. 

Some students have done WTW in the past, and were very excited to begin the program this year. The students are enjoying Words Their Way very much so far!

Students follow the key: 

* = words they know (can explain/define and can use in their own writing)

? = words they are not yet familiar with

?* = words they initially did not know, but learned in their partner groups

! = a new word they have added to that category

This was one of our exit slips where every student had to write a new word under the category to extend the lesson and expand our students vocabulary.