Working with Words

In this area we work on two skills – systematic phonics instruction and sight words.

Systematic phonics instruction is where students learn about phonics by manipulating letters and learning about the different sounds they make within real words. The Making Words approach enables students to “learn by doing” and works well with students with complex communication needs.

Then the other skill they need is to read sight words – and they need to read them more or less instantly. We learn a lot of sight words through sounding them out – but there are also a group of sight words, such as “the”, which are words that we have to learn as a chunk because we can’t sound them out. We use a word wall as our tool to do this – and I did a couple of word wall blog posts which I’ve listed below which should be helpful!

Blog Posts from Jane Farrall Consulting related to Working with Words:

• Word Walls: Planning a year of word wall
• Word Walls: Getting the Resources Ready
• Word Walls: Using the Word Wall
• Using the Word Wall in Writing
• Making a Portable Word Wall
• Making Word Wall words in Boardmaker
• Word up – 2019 is here and we’re going to the wall!
• Word Wall Oxford 500