Word Collectors

This unit is devoted to a careful study of words.  Spotlighting vocabulary instruction matters.  Using books, colleagues, and community, students will be exposed to an environment of rich talk and careful listening.  Imagine second-graders brimming with conversations and fascination about words and their wonder.  As this unit unfolds, students will approach words with interest and questions. Allow time to savor and question what a word is and how it got its meaning.  Allow them opportunities to study the parts and make meaning using those parts of words.

The first bend focuses on word consciousness, and it relies on the work of many vocabulary experts on how to best create an environment in which students become aware of and intrigued by words and their meanings.  Growing one’s vocabulary is big work, and we don't want students to do this work alone.  Sometimes students will work with one partner.  Other times, they’ll work in rug clubs- which will soon become their word collector clubs- exploring new words together.  These collaborations will help students see that knowing how to pronounce and spell a word is not enough; instead the work of determining a word’s meaning is critically important.  Rich vocabulary instruction can’t happen in isolation in one tiny segment of a day.  Instead, students will be exposed to extensions across this unit where teachers will find opportunities across their day to spotlight vocabulary instruction.  Students will grow their word collections during read-aloud time, shared reading, reading workshop, and math workshop, and be encouraged to use those new words in different contexts.

In Bend II, the focus shifts to studying compound words, with the aim of learning that word parts not only help a reader to break a word apart, but also help them determine the meaning of a word.  Through compound word study, children learn that manipulating word parts can change the meaning of words, which is an important entry point to the study of morphemes such as affixes.  

Bend III shifts students’ focus to a more complicated means of word morphemic relationships- that of affixes and their effect on base words.  In particular, students explore two kinds of affixes:  prefixes and suffixes.  Throughout the unit, students will check in on the spelling and spelling patterns they find  in these words with multiple parts.