Name Game!

For those of you working with young children, the most important words you collect and work with will be their names (and the names of their friends, classmates, and family members)! This week, I hope to use our names to show you what a wonderful resource they can be for phonics and word study! While young children use them to learn the alphabet and also their initial and final consonant sounds, we will use them to do some advanced word study learning.

For those of you who have Eden as your case study student, you will need to learn about accented and unaccented syllables. Because Eden is a very good speller, this is where she is making a lot of her mistakes. (And this is where a lot of adults still make a lot of mistakes, too!)

So ... what are accented and unaccented syllables, you ask! Let's start with our names. I have a name -- well, actually two names -- that are constantly misspelled. My first name is spelled Meredith, not Merideth! My last name is Whittaker, not Whitiker! One reason that the e in Meredith gets misspelled a lot in that it is a vowel in an unaccented syllable that doesn't make a true long or short vowel sound. Instead it's more of what's called a schwa sound. It's the same thing with the a that gets misspelled in Whittaker. It doesn't make a true long or short vowel sound anymore!

Remember how hard it was for some of us to distinguish between long and short vowels a few weeks ago when I asked you to create the word sort? That's because a lot of you were selecting really cool long words that had multiple syllables, including unaccented syllables in which there wasn't really a true long or short vowel sound. (Folks who chose one-syllable words seemed to have very little trouble!) For advanced spellers, long words with unaccented syllables is where spelling often gets tricky!

So how do you tell what the unaccented syllables are in your name? Here's a trick from the authors of Words Their Way that you can teach students .... Put your hand lightly under your chin. When you say your name, feel for when you jaw drops. Try it with my name, "Meredith." Do you feel your jaw drop slightly when you say, /Mair/? That's the accented (or stressed) syllable. That is the part of my name that usually gets spelled right!! Your jaw doesn't drop for the final two syllables so they are both unaccented syllables. (Try it with Molly. Do you feel your jaw drop for the first syllable? This is the accented one.)

For this week's post, let's use our names to do some advanced learning and also some review. Here's what I'm looking for:

1. See if you can figure out what the accented syllable is in both your first name and your last name. (Buddies, make sure to check your partner's work and to help, if needed!) Do people ever misspell the vowels in your name? Is it in the accented or unaccented syllable?

2. Review the key terminology below by finding a name on our class roster that fits the category.

• Can you find 3 names that have consonant digraphs in them? (Make sure to write both the number and the actual names.)

• Can you find 3 names can you find that have consonant blends in them?
  

• Can you find 3 names that have a two-letter vowel team in them? (Check Chapter 5 if you need clarification. I'm looking for vowel teams, not just words that have two vowels in them.)

• Can you find 3 names that have r-controlled vowels in them?
  

• Give one name with a true long vowel sound in it.

• Give one name with a true short vowel sound in it.
  

BONUS (for an extra credit point!)

• I could only find one name with a split-vowel digraph in it. Can you find it? The first person to find this (judged by the time stamp on the blog) wins a bonus point!

Here are the names:

Alyssa Brooks

Caitlin Collins

Jessica Collins

Marlaina Cruz

Marcy Ebel

Kim Griffith

Terri Houdeshell

Heather Johnson

Jennifer Maclean

Erica Mathie

Zenaida Ortiz

Kelly Rigda

Jerica Schick

Brianna Schnur Meredith Whittaker

Susan Widener

Joe Yagielo

Good luck! Please consult Chapter 5, if needed!

Word Fugitives!!

Let's see if we can have a little fun this week (maybe more so than last week for some of you!) -- and also think about how meaning patterns in language can be useful for our students (especially those who are more advanced in their reading/writing/spelling)!!

Here are a few questions for you:

• Does anyone know what the word is that describes the momentary confusion that is experienced by everyone in a room when a cell phone rings and no one is sure if it is her/hers or not?!

• Does anyone know what the word is when you're hoping you get someone's voicemail but instead you get the actual person?!

• How about the term for always forgetting your umbrella?!

• Or the term for that frantic period in the morning that many families experience in the morning prior to leaving home when you're trying to get everyone ready?

• How about the term for when that traffic light knows just when YOU are approaching so it can turn red?!
  

These are things that happen everyday, but there are no words that describe them yet!! No one has really invented a word for them yet!!! That means they are "word fugitives" -- they are "wanted words" waiting for someone to capture them!!!

For this week's blog, I have for you a list of word fugitives that some people have been trying to capture! For example: The act of entering a room and forgetting why! (This one has been happening to me quite a lot recently!) Take a look at the word fugitives. Then I want you to work with a buddy and take the Word Fugitives Challenge!

NOTE: Blogspot won't let me post a document here, so you will find the Word Fugitives Challenge posted on ANGEL. Just open up the document that is called Word Fugitives in Module 8. See how many ideas and terms you can match up just using a meaning pattern, or a root word or chunk that you know! I bet you'll figure out #1 just by using the base word!

(Answer: The act of entering a room and forgetting why is "destinesia" because it's destination and amnesia put together!)

Just have fun with this and see how many you can match up!

Then report back: Which ones could you figure out? Which ones were challenging? Were there any that didn't have a meaningful root word you knew? How does this activity connect to helping kids to use meaning patterns in their reading?

Sorting Out Word Sorts!

This week, we're going to look back on all the words we've found so far for our blogs this semester and see if we can create a closed word sort with these words!

Here's what I'd like you to do. Let's imagine that we are working with a "Within Word" speller. (We'll learn more about the different stages of spelling in a later module.) This speller needs work examining long vowels.

• Choose one long vowel on which the student will focus. Go back through your words and try to find 10 words that fit this pattern. (You may need to brainstorm more words, e.g., superhero or grocery words that would fit if you don't find enough.)
  

• The key to a good word sort is setting up a scaffold of support for your student. So you'll want to choose a contrasting category so your student can contrast a pattern he knows with this new one. For long vowels, a good contrasting pattern would be the short vowel, e.g., contrast cat (short vowel) and cape (long vowel). Again, go back through your blog and try to find 10 words that fit this pattern.
  

• Choose a key word for each category to establish the categories clearly for your student. (Note: If you were actually doing this sort with a young reader, you'd likely want to start with one-syllable words.)

In your blog entry, make sure to include the following information:

• What long vowel phonics element did you decide on as the focus of your study?
• Does your sort focus on the alphabetic, pattern, or meaning layer of spelling? (Revisit the article on what teachers ask about spelling or our tags posted in the last module if you're still working out the difference.)
• What are the words you'll use (including the key word)? List them all and sort them into the two categories. (Or see if a friend can sort them!)
  
• What did you discover when you sorted your words into two categories?
  
• Can you think of a meaningful text you could give children in which they could follow the sort with a word hunt for the features you've focused on?