Bringing Word Study to intermediate Classrooms

I think one of the most important statements in this article was the first sentence where she is saying that it is important to engage students and get them excited about the literature and the reading. If students want to learn and are excited about the content and the information then they will learn more and retain more information. I feel as though it is very important to teach language arts to students where you teach the writing, reading, and spelling as one rather than as individual subjects. It will be more meaningful for students to learn new vocabulary and spelling through their use with real text than it would with simple memorization of word spelling. A teacher can teach word families through text by having students read a selection and find new words and then have them conduct their own word research to find new related words, root words, and other derivations. Through a complete interactive process of learning about words through text students would also be working on reading, writing, and reading comprehension skills. Another important aspect of implementing word study into your own classroom is understanding the level of your students as individuals. You will need to put students into groups according to their own level and then structure lessons and spelling lists according to meet the needs of those in a level specific group. Students will benefit from being in a group with words that they will be comfortable learning and understanding so that they can lay down a foundation to learn new patterns and progress to a new level. Students would also benefit from applying the words they learned into classroom activities like those discussed in the article. The more they understand about the derivation of a word, different parts of a word, and basic word patterns the easier it will be to identify how to spell new unidentified words and it will make them better independent readers.

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