1.      Explain the three levels of words and how you can use word levels to decide which words to teach.

a.       Familiar words- words that appear every day in text and conversation that students read automatically such as bed, look etc.

b.      Appear often in print and daily conversation- words that are pretty high in frequency but are not found often enough to be automatically recognized

c.       Unique words that need to be read technically and cannot be decoded with basic rules such as biology.

The first category does not need to be taught explicitly. Students pick up these words and incorporate them to memory. Focuson the second category, which are found often enough that children need to know them, but are not familiar enough that they necessarily know them without being taught. Use words that are commonly found with the population of students that you are teaching. The third category of words should be explained in context but is not necessary to focus so much on because of the infrequency of these words in students’ lives.

2.      How do you teach your students to "chunk" words as a strategy for decoding unfamiliar words? When do you provide this instruction?

Show words on sentence strips, and instruct them to tear it apart until you find a chunk that you can read. Then put the parts back together and read it all together.

Then start covering parts with finger and reading the parts that they know and then uncovering the rest of the word.

Eventually it becomes an automatic strategy that they do not even need to use their fingers. Students automatically find readable chunks within the word and break it up and put it back together.

This instruction should be shown when we no longer want students to be focusing on decoding each letter in isolation, when words are more complex, when students are familiar with enough words that they recognize automatically.

3.      Based on Professor Allington's comments and the classroom examples, what are some ways you might foster word study in your classroom?

·         Connect words to relatable experience

·         Incorporate vocabulary instruction in reading lessons- students see it in context and that provides them with an example of the usage of the word

·         Does not need to be separate lesson but can be a sublesson within a literature lesson

·         Additionally, new vocabulary words can be introduced in isolation at regular intervals to build students’ word banks.