Word Work in Secondary School

Having taught in middle school my entire teaching career, I had heard vaguely of "word work" as something only elementary schools do -- you know, with phonics or something like that. It wasn't until a professional development session offered by my district a couple of years ago that I discovered that word work can be done in middle school as well -- and it is very much needed, especially as our populations of English language learners increase and reading scores decrease.

Reading deficits

It always surprised me how many basic phonics and spelling generalizations my students didn't know, such as the silent e for a long vowel sound, removing the silent e to add ing, and doubling the consonant to add ed or ing for a short vowel sound. Many ELLs that came through my classroom over the years struggled with spelling words in past tense ("wisht" for wished, or "wantit" for wanted) and with that pesky silent h ("whith" for with, or "wat" for what).

Oddly, it wasn't just the ELLs who were making such mistakes. There seemed to be an epidemic of pre-teens and teens who could not spell age-appropriate words. The connection between spelling ability and reading achievement is well-documented. If a child does not know common English spelling patterns, as evidenced through their writing, it stands to reason that they are not successfully decoding words with those patterns as they read either, which is affecting their reading fluency and comprehension. And this is compounded by the fact that their vocabulary bank account is virtually empty to begin with. With poor phonics knowledge, they have nowhere to draw from to increase their vocabulary funds or simply to break even when dealing with increasingly more difficult grade-level texts. So these students end up falling further and further into reading deficit.

To frustrate matters, in middle school, there is no room in the curriculum for remedial phonics lessons, no time to teach and reteach students reading and spelling concepts they should have mastered by second grade. The situation seems quite hopeless, but there are ways to make hefty vocabulary, spelling, and reading deposits for our kids.

Word work deposits

When a professional development session introduced me to a few file-folder word work activities, which can be used as 10-minute bell-ringers, in literacy stations, or as small-group interventions, I spent a summer creating my own. Many of them are phonics exercises that tackle the generalizations mentioned earlier, as well as distinguishing between the different sounds that ough, ow, and ch can make, or when to use ie vs. ei. 

Other folder activities tackle reading and spelling at the syllable and word level -- roots and affixes, making compound words, parts of speech. Still others take it to the sentence level, using a cloze reading activity. My favorite activities are the ones that delve into the nuances of English word meanings. For example, look at the words walk and run. There are, of course, many different ways to walk and run, and if you grab a handful of synonyms for each of those words, they all mean something slightly different. Using a "degrees of meaning" activity, students can sort the words on a plot line from slowest (amble, perhaps) to fastest (sprint), with such words as stride, canter, and lope filling out the line in between. Vocabulary activities such as word ladders, completing analogies, and categorical word sorts are also beneficial word work exercises for struggling middle school readers.

How I did this

I spent last summer, as I said, creating word work folders (I think I created about 25) using sticky notes. I used the word work activities as beginning-of-class group work. Each group would take a different folder and spend about 10 minutes working on it together. We made a section of students' interactive notebooks into a Word Work section, and students were responsible for copying down any chart or list of words appearing in their word work activity for that day. My intention was for each group to do one word work exercise each day.

The good news: I could tell that these activities were highly constructive for my low readers. The students were engaged and learning. I was initially concerned that the activities would be too easy for 7th-graders, but, again, I found that there were so many phonics, spelling, and vocabulary skills my students were lacking, so the activities were perfect practice for them.

The bad news: The activities did turn out to be a bit too easy for my pre-AP kids, for the most part, so I continued using the folders only in my on-level class, and even then, I unfortunately did not use them as often as I had intended. I do strongly believe that if I had used the activities more often, I would have been able to see marked improvement in spelling and overall reading. The other negative was that the sticky notes began to lose their stick after so many uses.

How you can do this

My experience with these word work folder activities, and my belief that word work is absolutely necessary in the middle school ELA classroom, inspired me to create a word work product for my TeachersPayTeachers store, and I intend to make more. For this first set, I have compiled 20 word work activities (including all of the activities mentioned above, and more), with clear instructions for students and teachers. Click the photo below to go to my store and see a preview.

And Part 2:

The small details

Here is how I suggest using the product once you print it out:

I cut a small mailing envelope and taped it to the folder to keep all of the cut-out words in. I would laminate the words, and the folders too, if you have the time -- that would certainly help the activities last a long time. I think the most challenging part of managing this would be preventing the little pieces of paper from getting lost. I have used Velcro dots with folder games before, but that takes quite a bit of prep work. In lieu of that, I would assign one person at each group to be in charge of the pieces. Middle school students really love being given such jobs, and they will take it seriously.

One thing I love about these folder activities is that the kids feel like they're playing a game, but they are working on such important skills that benefit them in every aspect of reading. I would love to hear from other secondary teachers who use word work regularly.

Similar products

I have some other products that are great for literacy centers, stations, and interventions: