Assignment 3 Week 7

    Explain the three levels of words and how you can use word levels to decide which words to teach.

a-   Familiar words- Words that students already know in passing and you do not have to teach or review

b-   Common words- Words students here on a daily basis but do not know the meaning of the word. Students often bring these words in asking what does it mean.

c-    Highly technical words- Unique words that come from science or biology and aren’t so common so you leave up to the teachers to teach. Also words that children do not know. Most likely larger words above their reading level that they do know the meaning of.

  How do you teach your students to "chunk" words as a strategy for decoding unfamiliar words? When do you provide this instruction?

You teach students to “chunk” words by breaking down the word. This can be done in many ways, either by covering half the word and pronouncing it in “chunks” or coloring the “chunk” of the word in different colors to pronounce one at a time then bring together. Also to make sure you the student understand the word they cannot pronounce you have them use it in a sentence or either re-read the sentence they took the word from if that’s where it originally came from.

This instruction will be provided many time through out the day to the point that it will be common nature for the students to do on their own, as well throughout the day if reading or doing a specific assignment.

 Based on Professor Allington's comments and the classroom examples, what are some ways you might foster word study in your classroom?

I would foster word study in many different throughout my classroom because students learn differently. I would have a word wall, writing notebook where they will practice writing sentence with words from the word wall. I will also have flashcards for words and along with this cutting the flashcard in half so the students can pronounce the word if having trouble, so there can be a variety they can choose to do. When teaching one way is never good enough the more of a variety you have in the classroom is good because you can reach out to each student.