Can't Find the Right Resource – what do you do? The Challenge of Teaching Writing Skills

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When I worked with beginning writers in grade one, it was always a challenge to encourage the writing process, expect my students to learn conventional spelling, and at the same time, not interfere with the creative part of writing. As the year progressed I could see that I had helped the majority of my students grow as writers and spellers. I had basically met the challenge! However, there was always a small group of students who needed more teacher direction to help them solidify their writing skills. These students were not risk takers and their writing sometimes suffered in terms of creativity, variety of vocabulary, writer’s voice and correct spelling of frequently used words.

When discussing the needs of these students with my colleagues and my principal, I often complained that I didn’t have the appropriate word book(s) to help them become more independent. Although I had many different primary dictionaries in my classroom, students still came to me for help finding a word they wanted to use or to check the spelling of a specific word. When my students tried to use the books available, they were often unsuccessful in finding the word that they needed. Lengthy word lists, additional information such as definitions and sentences, and theme groupings made it frustrating for them to find what they needed.

My principal and I both searched for something better and we approached a number of publishers over several years without finding anything that we felt was appropriate.

There was clearly a gap between pictorial word books and dictionaries with definitions in the kinds of published materials available to us. Eventually, we realized that we would have to develop what we wanted ourselves.

And so, a need led to an idea which became a reality when we created Word Wiz. Our goal was to fill in the gap by providing beginning writers with easy access to the words they want and need to use when they write.

If I had had Word Wiz in my grade one classroom, I could have better supported my beginning writers in developing accuracy in spelling, independent writing habits, and the ability to self correct. For example, many beginning writers are unsure of how to add the suffix “ing” to a word. They can’t decide whether to drop the “e,” double the final consonant, or just add the “ing” to the root word.

Word Wiz could be used to teach a small group guided lesson to develop their self correcting skills. Since the alphabetized list of words includes clusters of word forms, e.g. believe, believing, students could easily see the root word and how it changes when a suffix is added. I would teach them how to look up words and we would examine the words in brackets. When writing their first draft, the students could really concentrate on ideas instead of worrying about spelling and then use Word Wiz to edit their writing.

With another group of my grade one students I might extend this lesson. With my support, the students would use Word Wiz to make a collaborative chart. We would record root words in the first column and, in the second column, we would record the “ing” words. Together we would come up with rules about adding “ing” to root words. We would also look at other words in Word Wiz to add to our original list and decide which rule applied to them. The rules would be posted in the classroom for students to refer to in their everyday writing. In this way, the students would see how Word Wiz could help them self correct or edit.

This year, I plan to introduce Word Wiz to my grade three team members in my new school. We can use the Tracking and Planning Sheet from the Word Wiz Teacher’s Guide to identify the dominant developmental spelling stage for each of our students. We can then group students who have common needs and choose appropriate small group teaching strategies from the list provided. We can look through the black line masters in the teacher’s guide for activities that relate to the concept being taught.

There are many other ways that we can use Word Wiz in grade three. For example, students in the phonetic stage who are developing vowel sounds could locate ten words in Word Wiz that have a specific vowel sound. They would print each word, colouring vowels in red and consonants in blue. Then they would look to discover any patterns or create rules that would help them in spelling words.

We could also use Word Wiz as a tool for teaching the use of the apostrophe in common contractions. The alphabetized list of words includes contractions. In brackets, beside each contraction, are the two words that form the contraction, e.g. doesn’t (does not). Students could sort these contractions into groups and see if we could come up with rules about forming contractions (e.g., When making an “is” contraction, join the two words and replace the “i” with an apostrophe: he is - he’s).

Last spring, I eagerly shared “hot off the press” copies of Word Wiz with my peers – primary, ESL, and Special Education teachers. Their immediate response was very positive. They said things like, “That’s exactly the kind of word book we were looking for,” “That was a great idea to include er, and est words like hungry, hungrier and hungriest,” and “I like how the word book is organized and it’s so student-friendly.” I also shared Word Wiz with my new principal. She commented on how effectively Word Wiz could be used as a resource to supplement the literacy program in the school. I am eager to use Word Wiz with my own students and to introduce it to my colleagues.

During Raffaela’s twenty year career as an educator, she has taught many high needs students in kindergarten to grade three. She has high expectations of all her students, continually seeking innovative ways to meet their learning needs. She is currently teaching grade three in a Toronto school.

Raffaela collaborated with Evelyn Steinberg in the creation of Word Wiz and its Teacher’s Guide, published by Pacific Edge Publishing in 2004