Learning words is a big part of becoming a proficient reader and writer. Young children need to learn all sorts of information about words that may seem obvious to us adults but is brand new to them.

Parents and educators must become aware of and sensitive to the complexities of word learning in order to tailor their instructional interactions with more regard to what must be learned. Literacy experts Fountas & Pinnell (1997) offer many tips on word learning as summarised in this article.

Children need to learn:

n Letters cluster together to make a word, and there is white space between words.

n A word is spelled the same way whenever it appears in different stories, in books and in personal writings.

n Words can be made up of one or more letters (I, on, cat).

n Words are sequences of sounds that are represented by letters and clusters of letters (we, bike).

n Words have parts that are like other words (shoe, ship or day, play).

n The sound of a word is a clue to the letters in it.

n Words have letters that make no sounds (come, thumb).

n Words can be spelled the same but mean different things (I ran back to the house). I got on my horse’s back).

n Words can be spelled differently and sound the same (to, too, two).

n Words can be spelled the same but sound different depending on what is meant. (I read three books. I can read a chapter book.).

As children learn to read and write, they learn how words work. There are several ways we can focus on helping children learn about words in order to use them for reading and writing. A great starting point for helping children learn about words is their names. Working with his own name, a child can discover how letters and sounds go together.

n Show the child his name on a card and have them use magnetic letters to copy it.

n After the first name is learned, invite the child to learn his last name and then the names of family and friends.

n Children can learn how to find words that begin with their first name.

n Write the child’s name on card and cut up the letters and then have the child reassemble the name.

High frequency words occur again and again in stories and in writing. Many of these words just need to be known and cannot be sounded out (was, saw, the). Children need to recognise high frequency words quickly in reading and write them easily in their own stories. Recognising some words quickly does not take the place of solving words using letters and sounds. Children do need to know how to sound word parts in reading. Some suggestions for helping children build word knowledge are:

n Make a list of the most common high frequency words and display them.

n Locate these words in a book when doing a shared reading or reading aloud with a child.

n Play card games by having a child read the words quickly.

Additional support for children’s awareness of sounds in words can be done using magnetic letters to build words that follow particular phonics principles. Words can be created:

n With silent letters (silent e-like, make, bike)

n That start alike (cake, car, stop, stamp)

n That end the same (ball, bell, will)

n That feature the same vowel (cat, fan, coat, boat)

n With letter clusters (blends such as tr-tree, try, trip)

n With letter clusters (digraphs such as ch, wh, sh, th)

n With similar endings (going, looking, player, walker)

n With plural endings (cats, dogs, stories, ponies)

n With one syllable (hot), two syllables (happy), three syllables (kangaroo)

n With two letters (up, go, no, it, at)

There are many ways to explore phonics principles through writing words or building them with magnetic letters. There are also many commercially available letter and word games that can be enjoyed. Computers are becoming extremely useful for word games. Do not make word learning a difficult drill exercise. Key questions to ask about children’s word learning are:

n Are the children learning the alphabet names, letter sounds, and high frequency words?

n Do they use their knowledge of letters, sounds, and words when they read and write stories and messages?

n Do they comment on the letters and words they recognise, and connect them to words they know and new words they encounters?

Learning about words enhances what children can do with reading and writing. How they use their knowledge of words in reading and writing determines the success of word learning.

literacymatters@logic.bm