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Words Their Way
Stages of Writing / Spelling
Development
Synchrony of Literacy Development
Alphabet
Pattern
Meaning
Emergent
Beginning
PreK to
middle of
1st
K to middle
of 2nd
1st to
middle of
4th
3-8
5 - 12
Emergent
Letter
Name Alphabetic
Within
Word
Pattern
Syllables &
Affixes
Derivational
Reading Stage
Grade Range
Spelling Stage
Transitional Intermediate Advanced
Relations
Words Their Way
Stages of Development
Stage 1
• Emergent Spelling – scribbles to
partial alphabetic representation
w/o word boundaries
• Emergent Reading – Pre-Alphabetic /
Logo-graphic - (pretend reading to
memory reading)
• PreK to middle of grade 1
Stage 1: Emergent Stage
• Emergent stage is a period of pretend reading
and writing.
• Pretend to read retelling w/pictures and then
rehearsing and reciting well-known poems and
jingles to heart.
• Pretend writing / Scribbles to partial alphabetic
representation w/o word boundaries. Writing is
based on language and can be talked about.
IKSKP
(p.89 4-1)
• Gradually acquire directionality.
Emergent Writing Evolution
Early Emergent
Middle Emergent
Late Emergent
p.90-91
• Random Marks
• Representational Drawing
• Drawing starts to become distinct from Writing
• Letter Like / Mock Linear
• Drawing becomes distinct from Writing
• Symbol Salad (some recognizable letters/numbers)
• Partial Phonetic (some letter sound matches)
• Consistent directionality
• Use of letters (some directionality but no word boundaries)
•
•
•
•
Humans do not actually speak in words.
Speech is prosodic.
There is no such thing as an isolated phoneme.
Words and phonemes are artifacts of print and
do not naturally coincide with acoustic realities
such as syllables.
Therefore…………………………..
• Concepts of word and phoneme must be
taught.
• Both will emerge as children gradually acquire
alphabetic principle and coordinate the units
of speech with printed units on the page.
• By the end of the Emergent Stage, children
begin to show some degree of phonemic
awareness as they begin to use inventive
spellings. p.104 fig. 4-10
– As alphabetic knowledge is acquired, children will spell using
the most salient (outstanding) sounds in the speech stream
they write.
1SPNTM (Once upon a time)
tangible points of utterance where
one part of the mouth touches another or
sounds that make the most vibration / receive
the most stress
P. 92 fig. 4-4
In the Emergent Stage, sorts and activities
should focus on –
1. Vocabulary growth
2. Phonological Awareness
3. Alphabet knowledge
4. Letter – Sound Knowledge (PHONICS)
5. Concepts of Word in print
Such as……………………….
• matching word cards to individual words to
rebuild familiar rhymes and jingles to foster
the concept of word.
• Sorting objects, pictures, and some words by
concept, beginning sound, and rhyme
Only H(aitch), W (doubleyou), and Y (wie)
have no beginning – sound association in the
letter names and make these letter names
often more difficult to learn.
A writing component can be added to many
alphabet games to incorporate letter
formation which is often a neglected
component of early literacy instruction. (This
can add a muscle memory connection for
acquiring letter-sound knowledge.)
Examples of Sorts for the
Emergent Stage
?
Closed Sort: Animals / Non-animals
Animal Picture Sort
Bears
Monkeys
Dogs
Food, Clothes and Toys
Beginning Sounds b,m
• M and S is a good choice for students’ first
consonant contrast because both letters have
continuant sound that can be isolated and
elongated without undue distortion.
• B and P should not be contrasted in an early
sort since they are both articulated the same
way and only sound differently since one is
voiced and one is unvoiced.
• Knowing how groups of letters are articulated
in the same way helps to explain many of the
interesting things children do in their invented
spellings.
• This knowledge of articulation helps teachers
to make decisions about setting up picture /
beginning sound sorts so that letter sounds
that are much alike are not contrasted in very
early letter – sound sorts.
• 6th Principle of word study: Begin with obvious
contrasts!
p. 100 – Fig.4-1
• Guidelines for beginning sound picture sorts
p. 101-102
• As children learn the alphabet and the sounds
associated with the letters, beginning sounds
will anchor finger pointing more directly to
memorized recitation of text indicating the
onset of a concept of word in print.
• Instructional activities for Emergent Learners
p. 106 Table 4-2
• Children in the Emergent Stage benefit most from
a comprehensive approach to instruction and
early intervention.
• A comprehensive approach includes five essential
literacy activities. RRWWT is important so that
activities and materials flow together in a logical
way. p.106 Table 4-2
1. Read To
2. Read With
3. Write With
4. Word Study
5. Talk With
By the end of the Emergent Stage, children will
• Learn to segment onset and rime
• Show evidence of a Concept of Word
• Apply inventive spelling using some letter
sound correspondences
Stage 2: Letter Name - Alphabetic Stage
A Period of Beginnings
• Letter Name – Alphabetic Stage is the beginning of
conventional reading and writing.
• They use the sound/letter match to write..
• Initially in this stage, the students spell using beginning and
ending sounds.
• By the middle of this stage, students begin to use a vowel in
each syllable, and begin to spell short vowel patterns
conventionally.
• They use Finger-pointing to show an acquired concept of
word .
Beginning – Rudimentary Concept of Word
Mid – Late – Full Concept of Word
• Recognize some sight words.
• Disfluent / Word by word readers who fingerpoint and read
aloud to themselves
• Page 130 Table 5-1
Examples of Letter Name Alphabetic Spelling for
stick
• Early - SK
• Middle – sek
• Late – stik
One effective way to manage teacher directed
Word Study is to include it as a part of each
guided reading group several times a week.
Letter Name Alphabetic Spellers
• Have both names and sounds for letters
• Understand that words can be segmented into
sounds and that letters must be matched to
these sounds in order
• By middle of this stage, students include a
vowel and spell short vowels by matching the
way they articulate the letter names of the
vowels. Ex. /i/ as “e” & /a/ as “a”
• By the end of this stage, students have
learned to spell many short vowel words
correctly.
Characteristics of Letter Name – Alphabetic Spelling
page 132
Beginning
Middle
End
What Students
What Students
What Is
Do Correctly
Use but Confuse
Absent
Middle and Late Letter Name-Alphabetic
Spelling
• Differentiation between consonants and
vowels
• Clear letter sound relationships
• Frequently occurring short vowel words.
Letter Name Alphabetic spellers rely on what they
hear in the letter names and also on how the
letters are articulated or formed in the mouth.
• Affricatives – (made by forcing air through a small closure at the roof of
the mouth creating a feeling of friction )
• j, g, ch, dr, tr, and the name for h (aitch) make the
affricate sound and are often substituted for each other
• Voiced and unvoiced consonant pairs are also often
confused by letter-name alphabetic spellers.
van / fan
brave/BRAF
oven / OFN
Saying the words aloud as they sort helps
students feel the sound differences for
affricates and voiced / unvoiced consonant
pairs.
Voiced and unvoiced consonant pairs should
only be contrasted after students have
mastered most sounds and need to focus
attention on finer sound distinctions.
• Early letter name –alphabetic spellers have
much difficulty separating vowels from
consonants.
• Medial vowels are described by the state of
vocal cords when the sounds are produced.
Long / tense
Short / lax
Letter name – alphabetic spellers become
adept at fully segmenting words into
phonemes.
RAIN-ran
BOAT-bot
LINE-lin
 Short vowels are spelled with the letter name
closest to the place of articulation of the shortvowel sound they are trying to write.
BAT-bet
p. 137 fig.5-2
PIT-pot
POT- put
The CVC pattern is introduced in the late letter
name – alphabetic stage.
(Regardless of how many consonant
letters are on either side of the single
vowel (cat, clap, clack), one vowel
letter in the middle signals the shortvowel sound. )
Word Families
Short Vowel Family:
a. Sort by pictures that sound alike at the end (-at, -an)
b.
Sort by words that sound and look alike at the end.
Closed Picture Sort
Letter Name – Alphabetic spellers work through 5
orthographic features following initial
consonants.
1. Short vowels
2. Consonant digraphs
3. Consonant blends
4. Preconsonantal nasals (blends w/ m, n, & ng)
5. R, L, and W influenced vowels


R-influenced vowels that follow a CVC pattern (car, for) are presented
during the late letter name-alphabetic stage and can be compared w/
short vowels
Consonant blends w/ r (fr, tr, gr) are contrasted with r-influenced vowels
(from – form, grill – girl, tarp – trap).
Digraph sorts and a closer look at
blends:
• Level A
vs.
Letter – Name Alphabetic Materials
Teachers should set as fast
a pace as possible during
the letter namealphabetic stage because
success in beginning
reading depends on
learning the basic
phonics elements that are
covered in this stage.
Letter Name – Alphabetic Stage
 Scope and Sequence p.140 Table 5-3
Word Banks and Personal Readers p. 141
Contrasts for digraphs, beginning & final
blends and preconsonantal nasals p. 143-144
Introduction to r-influenced vowels ar & or
Pace & Sequence of Word Family Study
p.145 Table 5-4
• Word families (phonograms) support
students first efforts to analyze vowels
because the vowel and the ending letter(s) are
presented as a chunk or pattern.
 Rime – the vowel and what follows
 Onset – what comes before the vowel
 37 rimes can be used to generate 500
different words that students encounter in
primary reading materials
These chunks will be familiar in chunks in
thousands of multisyllabic words.
• Difficult Consonant Sounds in English for Spanish
Speakers
p. 151 Table 5-5
• Sample Weekly Schedules for Word Study in the
Letter Name – Alphabetic Stage
p. 152 Table 5-6
“There are many blends and word families to cover. You might want
to create 2- or 3- cycles. Ex. Introduce 2 word families on Monday,
another two on Wednesday, and then combine them for several
days. Pick up the pace by combining a number of blends or
families into one sort (up to 4-5) or by omitting some features.
Your observations should dictate the correct pace for your
students.”
Within Word Pattern Stage
and
Transitional Readers
Stage 3: Within Word Pattern Spelling
• Students build on their knowledge of the sound level
of English orthography and explore the pattern level.
• Students are in the transitional reading/literacy stage.
Transitional readers read most single-syllable words
accurately and with increasing fluency. They can read
some multi-syllable words when there is enough
contextual support.
• Students in the within word pattern stage use but
confuse vowel patterns. They no longer spell boat
sound by sound to produce BOT, but BOTE, BOWT,
BOOT, or even boat as they experiment with possible
patterns for the long –o sound.
Within Word Stage (cont.)
• The study of prefixes and suffixes is explored in the
next stage, syllables and affixes. Increasingly,
however, the reading and language arts content
standards of many states are requiring that students
are developmentally in the Within Word Pattern
phase.
• These words should be explored first as vocabulary
words students encounter in their reading, and are
not treated as spelling words until students know
how to spell the base word on which they are built.
• The sequence of word study in the Within Word
Pattern stage begins by taking a step back with a
review of short vowels as they are compared with
long vowels then shifts to common and then less
common and r-influenced long vowel patterns.
By the middle of Within Word Pattern,
Students are spelling many of the most
common long vowel patterns correctly in highfrequency words, but less common and “other
vowels” (ambiguous vowels and r-controlled
vowels) will pose problems.
By the end of Within Word,
students will have mastered
nearly all the long vowel
patterns on the inventory.
• Characteristics of Within Word Pattern
Spelling p. 172
• During Within Word Stage, students begin to
recognize patterns and chunks to decode
unfamiliar words. Fluency increases as
transitional readers begin to read in phrases,
pausing at the end of sentences, and they
read with greater expression
• Homophones are rich fodder for vocabulary
development in the Within Word Pattern stage
• Mastery of vowels is complicated by : p.175
1. More vowel sounds that letters to represent
them so vowel pairs and silent vowel markers
are used
2. Most vowel sounds are spelled a number of
ways
3. There are many types of vowel sounds: long,
short, r-influenced, diphthongs, and other
ambiguous vowels that are neither long nor
short as well as l, r, and w influenced vowels.
P. 175 & 180 Tables 6-1 & 6-2
• Despite the complexity of vowels, by the end
of the within word pattern stage, students
have a good understanding of vowel spelling
patterns.
• Knowledge of vowel patterns is a prerequisite
to the examination of the way syllables are
joined during the next stage of development,
the syllables & affixes stage.
• In addition to sound and pattern, the meaning
layer is critical to learning vowel patterns as
with homophones and homographs.
What about high frequency words?
• A number of spelling programs feature high-frequency or highutility words and focus on a small core of words students need
the most such as said, because, there, etc.
• In many cases, this reduces spelling to a matter of brute
memorization and offers students no opportunity to form
generalizations that can extend to the reading and spelling of
thousands of unstudied words.
• Many of these high-frequency words do not follow common
spelling patterns, but can be included in within word pattern
sorts as oddballs. Ex. Said is usually examined with other words
that have the ai pattern, such as paid, faint, and wait. It becomes
memorable because it stands alone in contrast to the many
words that follow both the sound and spelling pattern feature.
• Most of the top 200 most frequently occurring words according
to Dolch and Fry are covered by the end of the Within Word
Pattern Stage.
High-Frequency Words p. 181-182
Guidelines for Creating Word Sorts
• Sorts that contrast sounds and patterns are
the key to effective word study in this stage.
Possible contrasts are suggested in Table 6-2
(pages 180-181) and lists of words in
Appendix E.
The Within Word Pattern Spelling Stage
Covers –
1. Short & Long Vowels Contrasts
2. Common & Less Common Long Vowel Patterns
3. R-Influenced Vowel Patterns
4. Diphthongs & other Ambiguous Vowel Sounds
5. Beginning & Ending Complex Consonant and
Consonant Clusters
6. High Frequency Words and Contractions
7. Inflectional Endings for Plural & Past Tense
8. Long –a and Long –i Homophones
• Word Study Notebooks in the Within Word
Pattern Stage p. 186
• Word Hunts
• Homework p. 187-188
• Games and Activities p.188 - 201
Weekly and Review Spelling Tests
• Weekly tests at most grade levels are recommended.
• Students should be accountable for learning to spell the words
they have sorted and worked with in various activities all week
and will ideally be very successful on these weekly tests.
• If students miss more than a few words, it may mean that they
need to spend more time on a particular feature/contrast or
that they are not ready to study the feature and should work
on easier features first.
• Periodically, review tests should be given – without asking
students to study in advance – to test for retention.
• Weekly spelling test grades should NOT be their only spelling
grades. Students should be held accountable for features
already mastered in their daily writing.
• Be creative with spelling tests. ( if there are 25 words in the
weekly sort – use a random drawing for 10 and then use a
couple of words found in their word hunts that follow the
patterns for the sort but were not included in the given word
list for the weekly sort)
Intermediate Readers / Syllables & Affixes
Stage
Students have reading vocabularies that are typically far in
advance of their spelling ability and can often read words
whose meanings elude them. Consider semantic difficulty of
words in sorts as much as the spelling challenge.
• begins in 2nd and 3rd grades for some students
& 4th Grade for most
• engages students in examining how important word elementsprefixes, suffixes, and base words combine
• structural analysis of words is a powerful tool for vocabulary
development, spelling, and figuring out unfamiliar words
during reading.
• Explore compound words and homographs
• Discover inflectional endings, -s, -ed, -ing that change the
number and a tense of a base word but not its meaning or
part of speech.
• Discover open/closed syllables
• Reexamine vowel patterns in two – syllable words
• 3. How stress or lack of stress determines the clarity of the
sounds in syllables
• Explore ambiguous vowels in two syllable words
• Examine base words ( free morphemes ) and simple
derivational affixes
• Examine silent consonants at the beginning of words
• Explore the spelling of words with hard and soft c & g
• Explore new vocabulary presented in content areas
Strategy for analyzing unfamiliar words
p. 205
1.
Examine the word for meaningful parts- base word,
prefixes, or suffixes.



If there is a prefix, take it off first.
If there is a suffix, take it off second.
Look at the base to see if you know it or if you can think of a related
word ( a word that has the same base)
Reassemble the word, thinking about the meaning contributed by the
base, the suffix, and then the prefix.
Try out the meaning in the sentence; check if it makes sense in the
context of the sentence and the larger context of the text that is being
read.
If the word still does not make sense and is critical to the meaning of
the overall passage, look it up in the dictionary.
Record the new word in your word study notebook.

2.
3.
4.



Page 214
Further exploration of consonants to make generalizations about
the spelling of hard & soft g and c, silent consonants, and other
consonant pairs foreshadow the in-depth study of spelling meaning
connections explored in the next spelling
stage………………derivational relations.
P. 220 Guidelines- It is fine to select a few words that
students might not know the meaning of, or words that
they only know tenuously, but do not overburden sorts with
these words. (Looking a few words up in a dictionary as a
part of the initial demonstration lesson is a good way to
encourage regular dictionary use for an authentic reason.
Sequence and Pacing --------Page 217 Table 7-3
p.218 – “Word Study Routines and Management – Word Study instruction takes place
all day long in incidental discussions with small groups and large groups, but most
students will need in-depth systematic attention to features at their developmental
level as well.”
• P. 219 Word Study Lesson Extensions for Word
Study Notebooks.
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
1. Find words that have base words and underline the base word.
2. Break words into syllables and underline the accented syllables.
3. make appropriate words on your lists plural or add –ing or –ed.
4. Circle any prefix and /or suffix, when possible, to words on your list.
5. Add a prefix and /or suffix, when possible, to words on your list.
6. Select five words and use them in sentences.
7. Sort your words by parts of speech or subject areas and record your
sort.
• 8. Go for speed. Sort your words three times and record your times.
• 9. Select five words to look up in the dictionary. Record the multiple
meanings you find for each word.
• Oral and written reflections encourage students to clarify and summarize
their understanding.
p.219
“The key to finding time to meet with
small groups is establishing routines.
When students learn weekly word study
routines, they become responsible for
completing much of their work
independently (both in class and at
home) or with partners, and this leaves
teachers free to work with other small
groups.”
Advanced Readers / Derivational Relations Stage
• In contrast to syllables and affixes stage,
exploration of words at the derivational
relations stage draws upon more extensive
experience in reading and writing.
• Usually in upper elementary, middle, high
school, and well into adulthood
• At first glance, misspellings at the derivational
relations stage appear similar in type to those
at the syllables and affixes stage ( at juncture
of syllables and with the vowel in unaccented
or unstressed syllables)
Characteristics / Derivational Relations Stage
• Specific spelling errors characteristic of this stage fall into 3
main categories.
• 1. In polysyllabic words, there are often unstressed syllables in
which the vowel is reduced to the schwa sound, as in the
second syllable of opposition. Remembering the root from
which this word is derived (oppose) will often help the speller
choose the correct vowel.
• 2. Suffixes like the -tion in opposition also pose challenges for
spellers because they are easily confused with –ian (clinician)
and –sion (tension), which sound the same.
• 3. Other errors occur in the feature known as an absorbed or
assimilated prefix. The prefix in opposition originally comes
form ob, but because the root word starts with the letter p
(pos), the spelling changed to reflect an easier pronunciation
(obposition or opposition?)
• Sequence of Word Study / Derivational
Relations Stage
Table 8-1 (p.234-235)
Consonant Alternation, Vowel Alternation,
Adding –ion to Words, Greek and Latin
Elements, Advanced Suffix Study, Absorbed
Prefixes, Content Area Vocabulary, and Word
Origins
• While the intermediate reader (syllables and
affixes) picks up syllabic chunks, the advanced
reader (derivational relations) picks up
morphemic chunks.
• S&A -------- mor-pho-lo-gy
• DR---------- morph-ol-ogy ……………crossing
syllable boundries