Why You Should Use Word Work in Your Classroom

Word Work, or word study, is time set aside for students to explore letter patterns and relationships in a meaningful way. During this time, students actively explore these skills with a variety of hands-on activities. The goal is to support students in both reading and writing. Students learn how to use letter patterns and relationships to help them decode unfamiliar words while reading and support their spelling while writing. 

When to Implement Word Work in the Classroom

Word work activities can be easily implemented into your daily instruction. You’ll need to evaluate your schedule and the needs of your students before deciding when to incorporate these skills into your lessons. 

1. Whole Group – Set aside 15 minutes of your time for phonics instruction. This is a great time to explore phonics skills that are on grade level and will meet the needs of all the students in your classroom.  Another way to incorporate word study into your whole group is through morning meetings, shared reading, or shared writing.  
2. Small Groups – This is a great time to work with students on spelling patterns and relationships. You can use word work activities for a few minutes at the beginning or at the end of a guided reading lesson. These types of activities should be short and specifically meet the needs of your learners. You can also dedicate the entire small group time to word study. These strategy lessons will help learners that are struggling with a specific skill and give them more time to practice.
3. Centers – This is a great time for students to explore and practice those letter patterns and relationships you have already taught through whole or small group.  Centers allow students to practice these phonics skills during a dedicated time each day. These stations also allow the teacher to differentiate the activities for the students and give the students independent practice. 

By incorporating word exploring activities into their daily routine in a variety of ways, students have multiple opportunities to practice. 

How to Incorporate Word Work

1. Sand tray – You can create your own by using a pencil box and some play sand. Write the words you want your students to practice on index cards.
2. Playdough – This is another fun and interactive way to practice phonics or sight words. Give your students some play dough and a list of words you’d like them to practice.
3. Activity Mats – I created these as a fun and engaging way for my students to practice the phonics skills we were learning in class. You can use them with magnetic letters, felt letters, or dry-erase markers. If you want to try them out yourself, you can grab the entire set of word work centers here. These activity mats are so easy to implement and require very little prep.
4. Phonics Rods – You can purchase these from Learning Resources. They are another great tool to use if you have them available to you at your school or are able to purchase them with school funds.
5. Magnetic letters – Kids love using magnetic letters. I use them in small group, centers, and even whole group when I can.

I hope I have given you some helpful tips on incorporating word work into your classroom. 

P.S. – Want to try a set of my Word Work Activity Mats for free? Click here to sign up for my newsletter and receive a free sample of my Short Vowel Word Work Mats.