Read With Me Cultivating a Literary Community 

Some of you might be new to sorting words as a way to learn how to spell them.  I’d like to take a moment to give you a little background knowledge that will, with hope, help you support your students in their word study at home this year.

Homework Recommendations

The principles behind sorting words are very similar to the principles behind Math Investigations.  Students are engaged in hands-on learning activities involving a select group of words that follow certain spelling patterns, or rules.  By analyzing and grouping these words in different ways, students should begin to develop an understanding of the rules of spelling for the English language.  For this reason, you’ll notice on the suggested spelling homework rituals information sheet in your child’s homework folder, I do not recommend more traditional activities (writing words three times each, putting words in ABC order, etc.) for studying their weekly words.  Rather, I recommend the students sort their words, record their sort, and “mark up” their words as a process of analyzing the spelling patterns.  As a final study technique, the night before the assessment, I recommend students follow a series of steps to commit the words to memory.

Headings

Our first unit is the study of vowel patterns.  Sort one is an introductory sort, intended to help the students practice identifying patterns within the words.  This week we started on the ground floor.  I asked the students, “Do you know what a vowel is?”

I don’t know about you, but, as a child, I always learned that “a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y” were the vowels…but no one ever told me why “sometimes y”.  They NEVER explained that to me!  I can actually remember sitting in a Texas elementary school classroom and reciting with my class, “a….e….i….o….u….and….some….times….y.” in slow, exaggerated voice students use when asked to respond in unison, and thinking, disgustedly, “That doesn’t make sense!”  It wasn’t until much later in life (college?) that the puzzle reoccurred to me and I discovered why.  For those of you who may have never wondered why, sometimes the y makes the sound of a vowel (as in cry, Jenny, and cyst), while at times it makes a consonant sound (as in yes).  But I digress…

As a general “rule of thumb”, encourage your children to find the patterns within the word by, first, finding the vowels.  Look at the consonants around the vowels to identify patterns.  For instance, this week’s four patterns are VCC, VVC, VC, and VCe.  (V = Vowel, C = Consonant)

Let’s take the word plain.  First, find the vowel(s).  plain This word is easy.  I immediately can see that there is 2 vowels.  This week, that means it is in the VVC column.

However, let’s look at the word stake.  Again, find the vowels.  stake I notice there is one vowel by itself, followed by one consonant.  However, it is also followed by a “sneaky e”, which means it belongs in the VCe column.

(Hint:  Ask your child to tell you the story of the “sneaky e”.  If they were present in school on Tuesday, I’m sure you’ll hear all about it!  It is my own urban myth.)

Helpful Hints

I’ve found that, at times, I need to front load some sorts throughout the year with a few hints.  Here are some I’ve shared so far this year.

• Q and U are Siamese twins!  Do not be fooled by the U when you’re looking for vowel patterns….just ignore it if it is attached to a Q.
• “Sneaky e” story (Ask your child!)
• The four sounds of Y
• Short and long vowel symbols (short looks like a happy face, long is a long line, or “annoyed” face as it relates it to the “Sneaky e” story…..)

This hints list will grow throughout the year, as will your child’s understanding of sorting and spelling patterns.  Please stay in touch with me if your child is struggling.  I’ll be glad to help you and/or your child as needed.

Thanks for your support at home!  Happy sorting!

Today, we met our new best friends…our writers’ notebooks! Ralph Fletcher had the honor of introducing our young writers to their new gold mines and how to use them in his book A Writer’s Notebook: Unlocking the Writer Within. He compares the writer’s notebook to a ditch. It is a ditch that you carve out in your life; an empty space for ideas and treasures to accumulate. The writer’s notebook, or seed journal, is a place to collect and preserve thoughts, observations, feelings, and ideas. These ideas may lay in wait, seemingly gathering dust, until one day, the writer rediscovers them and knows just where they belong…in their writing.

The writing your child will collect in this seed journal will not be perfect. It will, undoubtedly, be filled with misspellings and incorrect punctuation (or lack thereof). THIS IS OK. Writers do not polish and publish each and every piece of writing. In fact, most of a writer’s writing may never be read by others. Good writers carve out a little time everyday to “practice write”. This can look like many different things, but they all have one thing in common — they are not perfect.

However, as part of our writing workshop, young writers will periodically choose a piece or idea to develop further. It is then that these pieces will be taken through the complete process — drafting, revising, editing, and publishing.

What can you do to support your writer at home? Encourage them to write about their thoughts and experiences (remembering that the seed journal is NOT a diary). Provide them with time to write. Support their interest in writing by allowing them to share (or not share) their writing with you. Validate their efforts with a smile and compliment. Ask questions about their writing when appropriate. Point out some of your favorite parts of their writing — places where their writing feels alive. These suggestions need not occur all in one sitting, but over the course of the year. Allow your budding author to bring writing into their lives, your home, and your relationship.

Writers are ordinary people. They have ordinary lives, ordinary homes, ordinary families. They just react differently — they write about it.