Word Work
We use the Fundations program for Word Work.
The main components of this program are:
Phonological Awareness
This includes phoneme (sound) awareness, syllable awareness, and word awareness.
Sound Mastery
Students learn a keyword for each sound such as a-apple-/a/.
Sounds are taught in two directions - letter to sound and sound to letter.
Phonics
Students read and spell short vowel words and vowel-consonant-e words in one and two syllable words.
They learn a finger-tapping method to blend sounds in words.
Students apply phonics skills to decode words, phrases, and sentences that contain the letter/sound relationships they are studying.
Sight Word Instruction
Sight words or "Trick Words" are commonly used, phonetically irregular words which need to be memorized (ex: "the" "was").
Fluency
Students work on automaticity, which is the quick and automatic recognition of words in isolation.
Students also work on prosody, which is phrasing and expression.
Spelling
Students learn to segment and spell trick words in correspondence to decoding patterns.
They also learn to spell "trick words" through memorization.