Words Their Way: Pearson New International Edition: Word Sorts for Within Word Pattern Spellers

Word Sorts for Within Word Pattern Spellers is a companion volume to the core text Words Their Way: Word Study for Phonics, Vocabulary, and Spelling Instruction (WTW). The core text supplies the theory and research that underlie the curriculum laid out in these companions and it is important that teachers have this text available for reference.
Within word pattern spellers are typically transitional readers who can identify most one-syllable words in context but still struggle to spell those same words correctly when they write. During this stage of development, students learn to spell long-vowel patterns as well as diphthongs and r-influenced vowels. Words Their Way: Word Sorts for Within Word Pattern Spellers provides teachers with prepared reproducible sorts and step-by-step directions on how to guide students through sorting lessons. There are organizational tips as well as follow-up activities to extend the lesson through weekly routines. The materials provided in this text will complement the use of any existing phonics, spelling, and reading curricula.
These students are usually in the late first to mid-fourth grades and should already know how to hear and spell two-letter consonant blends and digraphs, as well as short vowels, to be ready for the features in this book. To figure out exactly where individual students should start within this supplement, you need to administer one of the spelling inventories and use the feature guides in Chapter 2 of WTW.
Word study as we describe it is analytic. Students examine words they already know how to read, and sometimes even spell, as a way to gain insight into how the spelling system works. This in turn enables them to analyze unfamiliar words they encounter in reading and to master the spelling of similar words. For this reason we do not recommend
that you give a pretest and then eliminate all the correctly spelled words from the weekly routines and the final assessment. Known words provide important reference points for the student who is using but confusing the spelling feature of interest. In this way we help students work from the known to the unknown through the scaffolding process.