To enable students to reach the goal of learning to spell and use English words literately in everyday writing, the Sourcebook maintains a clear instructional focus on student mastery of the Core Words, the highest-frequency writing words. One essential strategy for mastering the Core Words is to develop word-skill analysis techniques. This elevates spelling study above memorization, which is the lowest form of learning and often temporary.
Word-skill analysis works like this. Students collect words—any word they can find—that meets the criterion for a Sourcebook word-skill lesson. For example, students might find and write words that contain /sh/, a sound they may initially think is usually spelled with the letters sh. Students soon discover that many letters can spell /sh/.
Students’ word collection and word-analysis activities for /sh/ lead them to discover that many spelling patterns can spell /sh/, but the most common is the spelling pattern tion.
The high-frequency Core Words targeted for mastery in the Sourcebook program that illustrate /sh/ spelled with the tion spelling pattern are:
| information addition direction position section action attention |
nation motion population station solution dictionary condition |
education situation operation construction conversation transportation function |
Teachers are encouraged throughout the Sourcebook lessons to promote students’ ongoing collections of words that illustrate a lesson’s spelling criterion. Students find the words across the curriculum and in their wide recreational reading over time. They may work cooperatively or independently at school or at home to find the words. In this example, the criterion is words with the /sh/ spelling pattern. Students discover that there are hundreds of these words!
The benefits are many! Through the word-analysis strategies in the Sourcebook lessons, students’ language and spelling insights grow. Students develop greater understanding of the spelling patterns for their Core Words—they learn to discriminate between expected spelling patterns and those that are unexpected, called the Surprise Words. The spelling of the English language begins to make sense! But there is more. Students’ vocabularies increase through the exposure to the words students collect in their Sourcebook lessons. Vocabulary building, as teachers all know, aids reading comprehension.
Are there good reasons to take advantage of the Sourcebook word-analysis lessons? Yes, and these instructional opportunities are included in every Sourcebook unit.
For a print-it-out, word-analysis activity for students, see the Primary and Upper-Grade Activities in this Appleseed issue.