You're listening to episode number 212, of the Stellar Teacher Podcast.

Teaching literacy is tough, but with the right tools, you can be not only good, but great, amazing. I'm talking off the charts, impactful. Hey, I'm Sarah Marye, a literacy specialist with over a decade of experience working as a classroom teacher and school administrator. Tune in each week to this podcast to hear no fluff lesson ideas and strategies that will help you feel confident in your abilities to truly grow your students as readers. Are you ready? Let's dig in.

Hey there, stellar teacher. So glad you are joining me today for another podcast episode. So welcome to the month of August. I know for many of you, this is the month that you are returning to school, and I hope that you are getting excited for just an incredible year ahead.

Oftentimes teachers reach out to me and they ask, What do I do? How do I teach whatever concept it is, whether it is vocabulary or sentence writing, or comprehension, and teachers are like, "I just want somebody to tell me what to do". Now, if I'm being honest, I have a hard time telling teachers exactly what to do, because every class and every student and every teacher is different, and there's no single one way to be an effective teacher. However, I do want to provide you with some do's when it comes to Word Study instruction. So in this episode, I'm going to share with you five things that you definitely want to do with your Word Study instruction this next year. And then I'm also going to share five things that you want to avoid when you're thinking about how to teach word study concepts as well. So let's go ahead and jump in.

The first one is do some sort of word study activity every single day. Especially if you are you know, back on the first episode from Word Study, I talked about this quote from Wiley Blevins on how we want to create an environment where our students are active word watchers. And I just love that goal of word study. But the reality is, is, if we want our students to be word watchers, if we want them to have word awareness and word analysis skills, then we need to do it consistently. If you know, Word Study is something that we only do once a week or only on Fridays, or only when we have time for it, or, you know, only here and there, our students are not going to become word watchers and so really, every single day you should do some sort of word study activity that could be a whole group lesson. It could be some sort of student activity. It could be like a word sort or a building word activity. It could be a word-of-the-day routine that is not even a part of your literacy block. You could still do word study activities in other subject areas or as a beginning-of-day or end-of-day routine. So a word of the day would be a great way to do word study every single day. So it doesn't have to always be a part of your literacy block, but you definitely want to make sure that every single day you are either teaching or reviewing some word study element that you have done. And you know, even if it's something as simple as when you're reading aloud to your students, because I hope you're doing that every single day, if you find a word in your read aloud, whether it is a picture book, a chapter book, or even an article from science or social studies, and you pick out one word and you spend a few minutes analyzing it. You look at the phonemes, the graphemes, the morphemes, you talk about the syllables, you talk about antonyms, you talk about synonyms, you look for the context clues. Whatever you have taught your students, you just take that one word and you take a few minutes and you just break it apart and talk about it. That even counts as a word study activity every single day. So it doesn't always have to be an, you know, a whole group lesson that has a long lesson plan and is scripted out, you know, obviously we need to be teaching our students new word study concepts throughout the year, but every day, be committed to talking about words in some capacity. So that's the first do. Okay?

The next do is you should be teaching word study concepts in other subject areas. I'm assuming many of you are ELA teachers, since that's what I talk about a lot on this podcast. But I think in education across the board, in every grade level, we have this idea, and it's, I think, a misconception, in my opinion, that vocabulary is a reading element. I mean, obviously vocabulary is an important part of becoming a skilled reader, but I think there's this like burden almost placed on reading teachers that vocabulary should be taught during reading class, and it is the reading teacher's responsibility to teach students skills that are going to help them grow and develop and strengthen their vocabularies. But vocabulary is in every single subject, whatever you teach, vocabulary is an important and critical element of it. Which, in my opinion, means that regardless of what subject you teach, you should be teaching vocabulary skills and concepts to your students, because there are vocabulary words that are related to math and science and social studies and music and art and PE. And so whatever it is, there are terms that your students need to understand which means they need to have the tools and strategies in order to understand those vocabulary words that are specific to your subject. So for example, if you are a math teacher, I think that you could and absolutely should do a lesson or two that talks all about the roots that are connected to numbers. So uni, bi, tri, quad, cent. You know, all of those roots are connected to numbers and show up in math throughout the year. So rather than just teaching the specific word, like quadrilateral means a shape with four sides, or centimeter is, you know, 1/100 of a meter, rather than teaching the specific word and definition, take some time and actually do a lesson on what roots are. How do roots work? What are roots that we see in math? And, you know, actually teach what the root quad means, and then show your students or brainstorm a list of where are all the places in math that we see the word quad? What about places outside of math that we see, you know, the root quad? Do things like word webs and word ladders and creating words and breaking apart words, because that is going to strengthen your students within your subject area, but it's also going to help your students be successful in other areas. So if you are self contained, this just means that you have time throughout your day to teach word study concepts in other subject areas. But if you are a departmentalized teacher, and all you teach is reading and writing. Then this means that you can go to your co teachers and you can say, "Hey, you know what? This year we are all going to support our students with their vocabulary development. Which means, you know, can we all do a word of the day or a word of the week? Or, here's some things that I've been doing during word study that have worked. Can you do this with these words? Because they're specific to your content, and they're going to help your students". So do teach word study concepts in other subject areas, because vocabulary is important to everything in education, not just reading. Okay?

The third do is, do connect your word study instruction to actual reading and writing. This means that you want to consistently spiral review word study concepts that you've taught throughout the year, but you want to make sure that students are being word watchers and paying attention to the words in what they are reading, and that they are thinking critically about how they can apply these word study elements to their writing as well. And so a really easy way that you can do this. And again, it's about that transfer and helping students realize that, you know, when we talk about roots, prefixes, suffixes, spelling patterns, syllables, context clues, whatever it is, we actually then want to look for those things when we're reading. And so when you are reading out loud, or when your students are reading independently, you can give them four questions that they can ask themselves that are going to help them focus on words. And these four questions could be on a bookmark. They could be on an anchor chart. They could be listed on your board somewhere. You could put them on a little sticky note and tape them to students desks. They could be glued in the front of students reading journals, just somewhere where they sort of see these questions. And these questions can be what word did I read that I know a lot about? So, you know, encouraging students to look for words where they know the pronunciation, they know the syllables, they know the spelling pattern, they know the prefix, they know the root, they know the meaning, they know synonyms, they know antonyms, a word that they're like, Yep, I know that word. And then have them look for a word that they learned from the text. So is there a word that is maybe new for them? And maybe it's not necessarily a word that is new from pronunciation, but maybe it's new from the meaning of it, or maybe it's a word that they haven't seen used in that context before. So just what is a word that you know they learned from the text? And then have them, I love this question. Have them think about what is a word that the author wants me to know in order to understand this text? I think that helps them really think about author's purpose as well as the theme or the main idea, the topic of the text, and really thinking about what word am I reading that is really important to understanding the topic. And then the fourth question is just a really simple, open ended question; What word is the most interesting word that I read today, and why? And that could be from, you know, here's a word that does not follow the specific spelling pattern, or it's irregular, or it's connected to a root that we're learning, or it's a long word that I just think is really interesting, and I've never heard it before. But these questions are completely open ended. They work for any text. But they just get this idea of being a word watcher in students' minds and helps them just think about, okay, how can I pay attention to the words that I am reading? And you can have students answer all four of those questions every single day, every single time they read. You can have them pick one. You could have them bring a sticky note down to the carpet when reading aloud to them. And as you're reading, have them try to answer one of those four questions based off of what you're reading aloud. So really easy way to connect word study, what you're teaching in word study, to actual reading. And you could also even do the same thing with writing. You could take those questions and kind of rework them to where it's you know, when students are writing.

Moving on: the fourth do. The fourth do is do structure your lessons so that you engage all students in your word study. So whether you're doing whole group lessons or small group lessons, you want to think about, how am I teaching and how am I asking questions that get all of my students to participate? I think, so often, and this is just, I think, how sort of like, our classrooms have been run, and what we're used to, I think, especially from, like a management side of things, but we're used to asking a question and having one student give us a response. And when we do that, you know, while some students might even if they're not answering out loud, they might be thinking of the answer in their head, but really only one student is actively participating. And especially with word study, because we want to really strengthen that foundation of word awareness and word knowledge. We want all of our students to be actively participating in word study lessons. So when you're doing word study, and if you're brainstorming a list of words that have a certain prefix, if you are, you know, reading words that are broken up by syllables. If you are spelling words with a certain pattern, whatever it is, try to think about how can you structure your lessons or ask your questions in a way that get all students to participate? So a couple things you could do are just simply whole class response. So if you ask a question, just everybody in the class can respond to this question at the same time. And you know, it might be noisy. It might be a little loud. Some people might not do it, you know, in the right timing, but everybody then is going to be thinking about it. But two things that I love doing, and I love doing these sort of structures, even outside of word study, but having students do a turn and talk. So when my students would come to the carpet, they always had a specific turn and talk partner, and they sat by that partner, whether it was math, science, reading, writing. We usually switched them up once a month. So that way they constantly had a new partner, but they sat next to their partner. And then when I would ask a question, it would be, you know, Partner A is going to answer first and the next time Partner B. But that way, you know, if I ask a question, read this word broken up by syllables, or look at the syllables which, you know, label the syllables in the word, whatever it is. If you tell your students, okay, turn and tell Partner A the number of syllables in this word. Rather than having one student answer that question, you have 50% of your students are actively telling, you know, one other person. And it means a lot more meaningful, because they're looking at somebody and communicating to them. So it's just a really easy way to engage all students, and then, you know, obviously the next question Partner A would give their response. So turn and talk is a great way to engage the majority of your students. But also then a stop and jot especially with word study. If you have mini whiteboards, or if you've got a plethora of sticky notes, or if your students have a word study notebook, when you're doing word study instruction, have your students come down to the carpet. I always love doing whole group instruction at the carpet, having students come and sit down. So that's why I always say, have them come to the carpet, you know, with their notebook, or whatever it is. But whenever you're asking a question, have them write down the answer. And then you can always have one or two students share their answer out loud with the class, but that way, whatever you're asking, you're having every single student write down their response, so everybody's participating. So try to just think about your word study lessons should be set up in such a way to where, when you are teaching something and practicing whole group, you are getting every student to participate, if possible.

And then the fifth thing you should do with Word Study is, do make it fun. You know, Word Study can be fun. Words are interesting. Learning the English language can really be interesting. And so do things to make it fun. You know, occasionally, bring in a word study game. You know, whether it's like a Bingo or Charades or Pictionary, whatever it is, some sort of fun thing. Bring in a game to make it fun. You could do this is a suggestion that we talked about in the Stellar Teacher reading membership, but do a word study club. You know, we do book clubs, and students love book clubs, but you could do a word club with your students, and it could be a weekly thing, it could be a monthly thing. And it could also be just something that you even do on a regular basis, that doesn't take much time. But you could give students literally a word. Be strategic, try to pick a word that has a root, you know, some prefixes, suffixes, maybe has some syllable types that you've worked at, maybe has an irregular spelling pattern, has synonyms, antonyms that your students would be familiar with or they could easily find, but literally give them a word and tell them, Okay, your job is to analyze it. Your job is to break it apart. Your job is to tell us everything there is to know about this word. They could create a poster for it, you know, and it's a fun opportunity for them to apply everything they've learned you know about word study. So even something as simple as that, as giving students a word and having them break it apart, you could have and this was another idea that came up in conversation in our Stellar Teacher reading membership Facebook group, but one of our members suggested this idea of having a word watcher bulletin board. Where you, when students either see something in their independent reading or hear a word, it's kind of an interactive bulletin board where students are looking for words that connect to what you're teaching in word study, and they add it to this bulletin board, and it's just, again, an easy way to bring in word study elements to your environment and also encourage students to be looking for words and paying attention to words in their independent reading. You would even have, like a word watcher job as part of your book club. It could even be as part of, like your classroom jobs. Or it could even be some sort of, like an award, you know, if you've got students that are constantly bringing up words from your read aloud or independent reading or talking about words, give them a word watcher award. And it could be a little piece of paper or, you know, just some sort of, like a sticker or some sort of external acknowledgement. You know, we don't always have to do external motivation or validation, but sometimes it is nice and fun for students. So just think of different things that you can do to make word study fun with your students. It should be enjoyable for your students to learn about words.

Okay, those are the five things that you should do. Let's move on and talk a little bit about things that you don't want to do during your word study. Now I love saying this, and I will say this: there is always more than one way to be an effective reading teacher. And so just know that when I say these things are don'ts, these are, I think, general practices that we should maybe avoid when it comes to word study. So anyways, I sometimes feel bad when I'm like, no, don't do this. But I feel pretty strongly about, you know, telling you that these are things that you should avoid, just if you are trying to make your instruction more effective.

So the first thing is, don't teach too much at once. I think this can be a habit. This was a habit that it was hard for me, I'm, one, I'm long winded, I'm wordy, I love to over explain things. But also I struggled with the pacing of my lessons early on, when I was teaching to where, you know, I would go a couple days without teaching something like writing, and then it's like, shoot, I haven't taught writing this week. And so then, rather than, you know, just like making time for a little bit of writing every single day, I would basically spend half a day like, okay, this Friday, I'm going to teach you five writing lessons in a row because I missed our lessons Monday through Thursday, but I don't want to get behind. That definitely did not work as far as an effective way to try to teach. And I think it's important for us to remind ourselves that we are teaching lessons because we want our students to understand something. And when we try to give them too much information at once, they're going to end up being confused, and, you know, lack confidence in their ability to apply it, and it's probably going to end up just taking more time because you're going to have to go back and reteach it anyways. I think reminding yourself that teaching a short, concise, bite sized lesson is going to be more effective than trying to teach everything at once because you feel like you don't have enough time. So if you are teaching the seven syllable types to your students, I would encourage you not to teach a lesson on all seven syllable types at once and spend an hour, you know, digging into all of these types. But rather it's like, okay, in these five minutes, I'm going to teach you about open syllables, and in these five minutes, I'm going to teach you about magic e syllables, and, you know, doing it one bite sized chunk at a time. So avoid teaching too much at once. I think another reason why teachers just feel kind of like this pressure to teach a lot or more than our students can handle is because we feel like we have a lot to teach throughout the year. And I think especially in upper elementary, if you've got students that come to you with maybe some gaps in their word study foundation, you feel like you have to teach everything in your grade level standards and on your grade level list, but also go back and fill in the gaps. And so it's like, okay, I have so much I need to get through this year that we have to, you know, teach all of these, you know, all of this at one time. But again, I think even if your students do have gaps, your lessons are not going to be effective if you are trying to teach your students a lot at once. So don't teach too much at once. Just bite sized instruction is the way to go when it comes to word study.

Another thing to avoid with word study is don't teach word study concepts as hard and fast rules. And I think it's important to remind yourself that when it comes to word study and helping students understand the English language, what we teach them are generalizations. And I think oftentimes, you know, we do teach them as rules. I think a lot of like spelling programs will explain, you know, phonics patterns as spelling rules. The problem with a rule is that we assume that that rule applies to every single word, right? If it is a rule, it should be, it should always work. But with pretty much everything you teach in word study, there are going to be exceptions. And you definitely want to teach your students and explain to them the exceptions, because you want to make sure then, that if they see a word that doesn't follow the pattern or the rule that they understand and they don't get stumped on it. You know, for example, if you are teaching your students about prefixes, and you teach them that the prefix u n means not. And every time they see u n at the beginning of the word, that helps them know that, that you know word is going to have some meaning that is connected to not, and you can use that prefix to help them figure it out. Unlikely means not likely; they see u n at the beginning, and they can use what they know about the prefix to figure out the meaning of the word. Well, the problem is, is that there are some, not a lot, but there are some words that begin with u n, where it doesn't serve as a prefix, uncle, U N, C, L, E, under U N, D, E, R, those words begin with un u n, but it does not serve as a prefix. And so if we tell our students that every time you see the prefix "un" that word part is going to have the meaning "not", when they see these words, they're going to be stumped, and then they're going to be like, okay, well, I don't understand the meaning of this word, you know, if it's new for them, because the prefix doesn't work in this case. And so rather than teaching word study elements as rules as this is every single time you encounter it. This is how it's going to be. We teach them as generalizations. And I think it's important that students understand within word study that there needs to be some flexibility with the application of it. There's always going to be exceptions. And ultimately, if students have a strong awareness and understanding of word study concepts, they're going to have the tools to help them understand and read most words. The goal is always going to be application of, you know, word study instruction to actual reading and writing. And in order to do that, they need to understand that these are generalizations and that there is a flexibility in applying them. So don't teach word study concepts as hard and fast rules. Teach them as generalizations.

Okay, the third don't is don't feel like you have to introduce new word study activities every single week or every single month. There is power in consistency and routine, and there are tons of really fun word study games and activities, and there's cute word study crafts, and there's fun interactive journals with lots of moving parts and everything. And these sort of activities are fun and can serve a purpose in your classroom. But if you are feeling like you are crunched for time, and you do not have a lot of extra time to dedicate to word study, then you want to think about, okay, how can I pick one or two word study activities or routines and just use those all year long? Because every time you introduce a new game, every time you introduce a new, you know, interactive journal element, every time you introduce a new sort of craft, or some sort of activity, you have to introduce it. You have to model it. You have to explain it. You have to practice it. If you want your students to get the maximum benefit of it, you need to teach them how to actually do whatever that activity is. And so if every week it's like, okay, we're doing word study in a new way, then you're having to teach them the new way how to practice word study. So instead of constantly introducing new different activities for word study practice, think about how you can use the same routines and have your students use those routines. The routine is the same, but the words are different because of what you're teaching them in whole group. So things like word-of-the-day or word-of-the-week, word sorts, building words, these are probably some of my favorite word study activities, and these stay the same. It's just as you teach them new word study elements, you're switching out the words. So maybe they are sorting words a different set of words, but they understand how a word sort works depending on what types of prefixes and suffixes you've taught your students, they're going to be building different words or more complex words, but they understand how to build words because you've taught them this routine and activity. So don't feel like you always have to introduce something new. You can have effective and engaging and fun word study instruction with just two or three routines that you repeat throughout the year.

And then the fourth don't is, don't make mastery of word study objectives your end goal. And let me explain because, yes, we want our students to learn and know and internalize everything there is to know about word study. We want them to understand what we are teaching them, but we want them to understand what we are teaching them in the context of being able to read it and write it and apply it in a real, actual setting. And so let's say that you are teaching your students all about the suffix "e d" and through your word study lessons, you know they know that when you add "ed" to the end of a short vowel word, that they've got to double the consonant. So they can spell "ed" words correctly, and they know that "ed" indicates past tense. And so they can sort words that are present tense and past tense in word sorts. And if you give them a quiz, they can tell you that shopped means to have, you know, shopped in the past and walked means that they have walked in the past, or you know it happened in the past, yesterday, last week, last year. But when they're reading "ed" words, they still read them as "walkid" and "flipid" and "shopid". Please tell me you've had third, fourth and fifth grade students who read those words incorrectly, because it happens every year. And so it's like, yeah, your students did well with those word study activities, but if they are still reading the words incorrectly, then our word study instruction has fallen short. So rather than making your end goal mastery of the word study objective or the word study activity, you know, so rather assessing word study through a spelling test, a vocabulary quiz or, you know, some sort of worksheet or whatever it is, your end goal should always be application in real reading and writing. And so we just need to make sure that we do not lose sight of that.

And then the fifth thing that you should not do is don't wait until you feel like you're an expert to get started with word study. I think, and I've had this conversation with so many upper elementary teachers this summer, and my whole purpose of doing a word study series this August is because so many teachers say I don't know how to teach word study, I feel like I don't understand how to teach something like phonics in upper elementary, I don't know how to support students who have gaps in their word study foundation. And so many teachers say, if I don't know it, I just avoid it, I just skip it, and I just teach my grade level content without going back and, you know, trying to fill in the gaps. And I think, you know, especially if it comes to teaching some of those basic phonics principles, or helping students understand how to blend and break apart words, we feel maybe like, okay, I don't I don't know what to do, because the resources and the support and the training are not always present for upper elementary teachers in that area. But just because you are not an expert at it yet doesn't mean that you won't be. And the only way for you to improve your word study, instruction and practice and effectiveness is to just jump in and do it. And it's okay if you make a mistake. It's okay if you have an idea for an activity and it doesn't work the way that you thought. It's okay if you teach a lesson and you realize you taught too much, or you taught too little, or you didn't explain it in a way. It's okay if you teach your students a generalization that is maybe slightly incorrect and you go back and correct it later. You do not have to be perfect, but you definitely have to get started. So don't wait until you feel like you're an expert to start digging into words and word study.

Those are my do's and don'ts of word study instruction. Let me quickly recap. You do want to do some form of word study activity or practice every single day. You want to make sure that you are teaching word study concepts in other subjects. You want to make sure that you are connecting your word study instruction to actual reading and writing, because, of course, that's our end goal. You do want to structure your lessons so that all students are engaged in word study, and you want to make sure that you're doing things to make word study fun.

Now these are the five don'ts, or the five things that you want to avoid. You don't want to teach too much at once. You also don't want to teach word study concepts as hard and fast rules. Remember, we can introduce them as generalizations. You don't want to feel like you have to introduce a new word study activity every single week or every single month. We also don't want to make mastery of word study objectives your end goal. Remember, the end goal is for students to apply them to their reading and writing. So yes, we want them to master word study concepts, but more importantly, want to make sure that they're transferring that to their reading and writing. And then finally, and maybe the most important, don't wait until you feel like you're a word study expert to get started with word study instruction in your classroom.

Okay, I hope you found these do's and don'ts helpful and are excited for a wonderful year of word study instruction ahead. Be sure to join us next week, we have a special guest on the show, and I can't wait to introduce you to her.

Thanks so much for joining me today. If you enjoyed today's episode and are finding value in this podcast, it would mean the world to me if you subscribe and leave a five star positive review. This helps me spread the word to more and more teachers, just like you. Don't forget to join me over on Instagram @thestellarteachercompany, and you can also find links and resources from this episode in the show notes at stellarteacher.com. I'll see you back here next week.