Grade 2
Word Work
Word Work
Word Work is a part of small group reading instruction. During word work, students practice and apply phonics skills that they are learning. The focus of word work is to develop students' skills in letter-sound knowledge, blending sounds together to read words, as well as breaking longer words into parts to read them.
Some examples of word work include:
continuous blending
making words with letter tiles or dice
word sorts
word study
-learning how to break words into parts or syllables
-learning about prefixes and suffixes and their meanings
Word Sorts in Action
Watch this video to see students working on different types of word sorts. This teacher calls the sorts you sorts, speed sorts, pattern sorts, and blind sorts.
Fluency
Fluency is the ability to read accurately, smoothly, and with expression. When students read fluently, they are able to dedicate effort to understanding what they are reading. Therefore, reading fluently benefits reading comprehension. Currently, I utilize the program Increasing Fluency with High Frequency Word Phrases to develop second grade students' reading fluency. Throughout the week, students participate in repeated readings of key words and phrases found in a short story. In addition, with appropriate teacher support and guidance, students answer comprehension questions about the story and learn a specific fluency skill such as incorporating expression, chunking, expressing mood, etc.
Sight Words
It is important for students to learn to read sight words effortlessly and automatically because they will encounter them often when reading and writing. The more sight words that a student can read automatically, the easier it will be for him/her to read because sight words are found in most of the sentences that they read every day. Sight words are sometimes called irregular words because many are spelled irregularly (they don't always follow spelling rules). This can make it difficult for young learners to remember and recognize sight words when they are reading.
In reading group, students will learn sight words by rereading the key words found in the each's week story from the Increasing Fluency Using High Frequency Words program. In addition, I will be using an approach to teaching sight words called Heart Word Magic. This approach teaches students to analyze the letters in sight words and determine which letters are not making the correct sounds. Those are the letters that students must learn by heart. Here is a video to show you the Heart Word approach: https://vimeo.com/368428974
Each week your child will practice learning 6 sight words at home. The sight words are found on the Fry instant word lists. Words from the Fry word lists are the most common words used in English.