Words Their Way Stages Characteristics

Words
Their Way spelling strategies by stage

1. Emergent stage

   1. Read to students and encourage oral language activities

   2. Model writing using dictation and charts

   3. Encourage pretend reading and writing

   4. Develop oral language with concepts sorts

   5. Play with speech sounds to develop phonological awareness

   6. Plan activities to learn the alphabet

   7. Sort pictures by beginning sound

   8. Encourage fingerpoint memory of rhymes, dictations, and simple pattern books

   9. Encourage invented spelling
      

2. Early Letter Name-Alphabet Stage

   1. Read to students and encourage oral language activities

   2. Secure concept of word by plenty of reading in predictable books, dictations, and
      simple rhymes

   3. Record and reread individual dictations

   4. Label pictures and write in journals regularly

   5. Collect known words for word bank

   6. Sort pictures and words by beginning sounds

   7. Study word families that share a common vowel

   8. Study beginning consonant blends and digraphs

   9. Encourage invented spelling
      

3. Middle to Late Letter Name-Alphabetic Stage

   1. Read to students

   2. Encourage invented spellings in independent writing, but hold students
      accountable for features and words they have studied

   3. Collect two to three paragraph dictations that are reread regularly

   4. Encourage more expansive writing and consider some simple editing procedures for
      punctuation and high-frequency words

   5. Sort pictures and words by different short vowel word families

   6. Sort pictures and words by short vowel sounds and CVC patterns

   7. Continue to examine more difficult consonant blends with pictures and words

   8. Study preconsonantal nasals and digraphs at the end of words

   9. Sort pictures comparing short and long vowel sounds

   10. Collect known words for word bank (up to 200)

4. Within Word Pattern Stage

   1. Continue to read aloud to students

   2. Guide silent reading of simple chapter books

   3. Write each day, writer’s workshops, conferencing, and publication

   4. Complete daily activities in word study notebook

   5. Sort words by long and short vowel sounds and by common long vowel patterns

   6. Compare words with r-influenced vowels

   7. Explore less common vowels, diphthongs (oi, oy), and other ambiguous vowels
      (ou,au,ow,oo)

   8. Examine triple blends and complex consonant units such as thr, str, dge, tch, ck

   9. Explore homographs and homophones

Words Their Way strategies from Words Their Way by Bear et al., pages 22-23