The Essentials of Word Work
Pat Johnson
Seattle Summit
June 22, 2015
patjohnson222@gmail.com
Catching Readers Before They Fall: Supporting Readers
Who Struggle, Johnson & Keier,
One Child at a Time: Making the Most of Your Time with
Struggling Readers, Johnson
www.stenhouse.com
 Demonstrate and teach word solving principles
with whole group or small group lessons.
 Provide opportunity for students to apply the
principles – hands on work with words in applicable
activities.
 Teach for, prompt for, and reinforce problem
solving while readers are processing continuous
text.
When Readers Struggle, p. 242
“Remember, word solving is about learning
how to connect words in ways that
generate more word knowledge. Word
learning will be useless unless children
can use the information while writing and
reading.”
Fountas & Pinnell
Word Matters, p. 99
Children need to use a balance of their
sources of information when solving
words on continuous texts.
Sources of Information:
woods
forest
Meaning
Word Solving
Syntactic
look
looks
book
took
Visual
f in d
find
 An ELL child might place a lot of weight on
visual analysis.
 “Another child who has strong oral language
skills … may try to avoid the tedium of the
careful analysis of print in reading and
attention to detail in writing. And their
avoidance behavior requires astute
detection.”
Marie Clay
Literacy Lessons 2, p. 168
Also be aware of:
 Child who looks up and away rather than trying to
solve.
 Child who has a “learned confusion” and thinks
there are 2 alternatives and that either response will
do. You must help him learn what is OK and what is
not OK.
 Child who did pretty well sounding letter by letter,
but never moved onto chunks.
It isn’t always about accuracy –
sometimes it’s about taking on a part of a
word solving strategy or strategic
behavior.
“Struggling readers tend to appeal
rather than work actively at words.”
Fountas & Pinnell
When Readers Struggle
p. 261
“…the teacher’s job is not delivering
knowledge, but arranging for the
problem to be manageable, sustaining
the child’s problem-solving attempts
emphasizing flexibility.”
Peter Johnston
“Revolutionary Contributions”
The Journal of RR, Fall, 2007
Students need to be flexible when
word solving.
“We do not want the brain to specialize in
learning one response for each symbol.
Why? Because English is not like that. It
is more important that the beginning
reader adopt a different stance: ‘It might
be this, or it could be that.’ ”
Marie Clay
Literacy Lessons 2, p. 123
What would happen if children are
inflexible and think that ‘a’ either
says short a or long a:
am
again
stain
mall
hard
bean
saw
caught
animal
anyway
said
“…children should be flexible enough to try
something else when their first trial is
unsuccessful, and that they need a growing
repertoire of what the most likely possibilities
may be.”
Billie Askew
Voices on Word Matters, p. 149
Teachers need to be thinking about the
concepts of how words work
14 Principles of how words work:
1. Initial letters can be changed.
go/so look/book make/take
2. Final letters can be changed.
cat/can
bed/bet hot/hop beat/bean
3. Letters can be added to the ends of words.
look/looks play/playing stay/stayed
the/them
teach/teacher you/your
4. Words can be put together.
in + to = into dog + house = doghouse
5. Initial letters can be upper or lower case.
the/The
Here/here is/Is
Principles of how words work:
6. . Middle letters can be changed.
dad/did
sat/sit
got/get ripe/rope
7. Letter clusters at the beginnings of words can be
added or changed.
play/stay sing/thing stamp/champ
8. Letter clusters at the ends of words can be
changed.
will/with must/much back/band
9. Letter clusters in the middle can be changed.
sheet/shirt pail/peel
chirp/champ
Principles of how words work:
10. Letters can be added to the front of words or
word parts.
am/ham or/for up/cup
it/spit
11. Some words sound the same but are spelled
differently.
here/hear
to/two/too
12. Some words are spelled the same but sound
different.
read/read
record/record
Principles of how words work:
13. Words can be read through analogy.
stump
st op j ump
crack
cry
back
trail
tr ee
m ail
14. Letters can be added at the beginning and at the ending of
words or letter chunks.
at
splat
splatter
stand understand understanding
eat
tr eat
tr eat ing
am
champ champion
ar
art smart smartest
Child makes analogies on his own:
“Before the teacher can allow the child to
think of another word and then make
the change himself, he must be working
with considerable independence. She
has to prepare the ground carefully for
that independence.”
Marie Clay
LL2, p. 144
Learning how words work could be
done entirely on the words the
child already knows. Do not
hurry into new territory.
Most supportive level:
Notice the different concepts:
book
can
up
look
cat
cup
Teacher gives both words and does so both
orally and visually.
Slightly less support from teacher:
go
has
_and
shirt
Teacher gives the two words orally, but
only one is visual.
Much less support:
look
play
must
_or
Teacher asks the question.
Child must initiate the word.
car_
Least amount of support:
• When reading continuous text, the child must
make the analogy.
st
am p
“The habit of linking needs to start early.”
Lee Skandalaris
We want kids to say, “this is like that.”
•
•
•
•
•
“I have that word in my other book”
‘brother’ – that’s like Brian’s name
This story is like that other book
Hey, ‘shoe/too’ – they rhyme
That has ‘and’ in it --- standing
There are different levels of
knowing a word.
We cannot assume that a correctly
read word is known in all its
detail.”
Clay, LL2, p. 46
When does a child really know a word?
•
•
•
•
•
•
New word
Only just known
Successfully problem-solved
Easily produced but easily thrown
Well-known and recognized in most contexts
Known in many variant forms.
Marie Clay
Literacy Lesson Two, p. 46
Instruction on “word work” is
woven throughout the day.
“
… teachers must abandon the notion that
they must first teach the child to
remember words before that child will be
able to read or write them. To the
contrary, children will remember words
because they have met them and worked
on them many times.”
Clay
LL2, page 139
Word work opportunities throughout the day:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Mini-lessons for word study
Morning Message
Shared Writing/ Interactive Writing
Centers/Stations
Writing Workshop
Shared Reading
Before, during, after Guided Reading
“Writing can contribute to the building
of almost every kind of inner control
of literacy learning that is needed by
the successful reader.”
Marie Clay
Support ELLS with word solving
through your book introductions.
Procedures for a book introduction:
 Always give the title
 Give a short summary – the big idea
 Hook the children with a comment or question
to encourage their talk
 While conversing, allow the children to predict
and negotiate the meaning
 Use some of the vocabulary from the text
 Practice an awkward language structure if
needed
 Include a ‘predict and locate’ word if necessary
 Mention, model, or remind children of the
teaching focus
 Save some things for the children to problem
solve on their own
• General Book Intro info in Catching Readers
Before They Fall, pages 78-80
• Specific ways to support ELLS - Chapter 7 in
One Child At A Time
ELLs and Awkward Language Structures:
Examples: Home we go.
Off they went to the beach.
Away went Lizard.
Suggested Teaching Moves:
Use it in the book intro conversation
Tell the child it’s a different way to say it
Have the student practice it
Give an “in” and “out” of text example
ELLs and Irregular Verbs or Advanced Verb Tenses
Examples: The balloon blew away.
The shell is broken.
Nick swam across the pool.
She would have gotten hurt badly if…
Suggested teaching moves:
 Bring it to the child’s attention
 Provide in and out of text examples
 Let the child practice
 Give the child a way to solve the word
Vocabulary
• Known words used in a new way
• Known concepts, but the English label is
unknown
• Unknown concept and unknown English
label
Vocabulary – Known words used in a new way
Examples: I am pleased I let you go.
Back in the village the people heard
the boy’s cries.
Suggested teaching moves:
Tune in when comprehension is lost
Support the student to use context clues to pick
another word that would make sense here
Elaborate on the meaning as used in the text
Add an out-of-text example
Vocabulary – Known concepts; unknown English
labels
Examples: Little mouse gnawed and
gnawed and gnawed.
“It stopped raining,” said Bill,
peering out of the tent.
Suggested teaching moves:
• Help the child make connections to a concept that is
known
• Expand upon the meaning
• Give the child a way to figure out the word
Vocabulary – Unknown word and unknown
concept
Examples: 3-legged race
hang-gliding
hearth
scarecrow
Suggested teaching moves:
Give a way to figure out the word so that the
child can pronounce it correctly on his own
Use pictures, drawings, or physical motions to
elaborate on the meaning of the word
So what about high frequency words?
“Struggling readers… generally have a lower
repertoire of words that they can
recognize effortlessly and their word
solving is inefficient, slow, and tedious.”
Fountas & Pinnell
When Readers Struggle, p. 261
“By the end of first grade, children
should be able to write 50-100 words
quickly and accurately and to use
their knowledge of spelling patterns
to produce many more words, which
may be correct or nearly correct.”
Fountas & Pinnell
Word Matters, p. 89
Develop a way to study words:
• Look at the word; use your eyes. (teacher can
say it and run finger under it.)
• Run your finger under it as you say it slowly
(coordinating L-to-R)
• Close your eyes and see it.
• What do you hear at the beginning? (using
ears.)
• Look again (child scans without help.)
• Now try writing it here (not copying.)
•
•
•
•
•
Arrange for repetition
Arrange for over-learning
Practice reconstructing with magnetics
Introduce tracing
Use games
“Games in general have little value, but designed
specifically for a particular child and used for a
brief period of time they may help to increase the
items that a child remembers.”
LL2, Clay, p. 176
Other sources - Word Matters:
• Chapter 14 – How to set up routines in your
classroom for a word study system – choosing
words, spelling buddies, activities with word
learning, look/cover/say/check, buddy tests, etc.
• Appendix 34 – lists of mini-lessons on word
solving strategies, saying words slowly, using
resources, giving a buddy test, etc.
• In When Readers Struggle - Chapter 12, Building
and Using a Repertoire of Words – activities for
working with words.
Catching Readers Before They Fall, Pat Johnson and Katie
Keier, Stenhouse
One Child at a Time: Making the Most of Your Time
with Struggling Readers, Pat Johnson, Stenhouse
patjohnson222@gmail.com (@PatJ222 on Twitter)
katieannkeier@gmail.com (@bluskyz on Twitter)
www.catchingreaders.com
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