Week Four

Invented Spelling-Allows students to write even before they can read during the emergent stage.
(Words Their Way, 6th Ed.)
Invented spelling is basically spelling the best you can using what you know about letter sounds.









Word Walls-  A collection of words that are displayed in large, visible letters on a wall, bulletin board or other surface in the classroom. (www.readingrockets.org)

Teachers generally hang high frequency words on word walls.  These words are words students should know, and by hanging them on a wall, students shouldn't have to constantly ask how to spell them. Word walls can contain high frequency words, or be displayed for a specific subject, such as math or science.


Word Sorts- A basic word study routine in which students group words into categories Word sorting involves comparing and contrasting within and across categories.  Word sorts are often cued by key words placed at the top of each category. (Words Their Way, 6th Ed.)

Word sorts are important to phonics instruction because they allow students to make their own generalizations about words and the way they are spelling, instead of teaching rules that have too many exceptions. 










Morphemes- Units in the spelling of words, such as suffixes or root words (Words Their Way, 6th Ed)

Morphemes are basically the smallest, meaningful parts of words that cannot be further divided.  Examples would include -ed at the end of word signalling past tense, or pre-at the beginning of a work meaning before.








Phonemes- The smallest unit of speech that distinguishes one word from another.
(Words Their Way, 6th Ed.)


Phonemes are each individual sound in a word.
 /r/ /u/ /g/







Synthetic Phonics-Phonics instruction that begins with individual sounds and the blending of sounds to form words. (Words Their Way, 6th Ed.)

Children learn how to convert letters or letter combinations into sounds, and then how to blend the sounds together to form recognizable words.








Analytic Phonics-Word study that divides words into their elemental parts through phonemic, orthographic, and morphological analysis. (Words Their Way, 6th Ed.)

Children learn to analyze letter-sound relationships in previously learned words.  They DO NOT pronounce words in isolation.

Week Three

Interactive Writing- An instructional strategy where a text is composed with student input and done largely by the students with teacher supervision. It is used to model writing strategies and concepts of print. (Words Their Way, 6th Ed.)

The teacher usually has a big piece of chart paper, and through classroom discussion, compose a summary, write a letter, or give information about a topic.



High Frequency Words-Words that make up roughly 50% of any text. The words that occur most often.  (Words Their Way, 6th Ed.)

These words are often called "sight words" because students should recognize the words immediately upon sight of them.  Knowing the words will make them more fluent readers.







Orthography- The writing system of a language, specifically, the correct sequence of of letters, characters, and symbols.

Simply put, orthography is.......Spelling!



Word Solving- strategies taught to students to help them become better readers and writers

Students are taught different strategies to help them solve unknown words in a text.  Some strategies are stretching the sounds or chunking the words.