Word StudyWORD STUDY and VOCABULARY Developing a knowledge of letters and their relationships to sounds is the most basic skill required. Our goal is to further strengthen your child's word knowledge and help them to build a strong vocabulary and a strong ability to decode and understand new words in context. Words are our most powerful weapon to fight ignorance, so we must use them wisely!
General Information We use a word study approach to spelling and vocabulary instruction. Basically, this means that we study patterns present in a variety of words and uncover the meaning and sounds associated with those patterns. Your child will not always have a weekly list, but will be working on a variety of words that use the pattern or rule we are studying. Vocabulary instruction, as well as sight word vocabulary building will also be included Language Arts as we try to develop stronger, more colorful vocabularies for speaking and writing. We will be working closely with the other teachers to incorporate content area vocabulary into instruction. A key element in vocabulary development is the ability to find meaning through context clues, so you will often see this type of cloze activity coming home as practice for vocabulary. Standards of Learning 4.4 The student will expand vocabulary when reading. a) Use context to clarify meanings of unfamiliar words. b) Use knowledge of homophones. d) Use knowledge of roots and affixes. e) Use Vocabulary from other content areas. 4.8 The student will edit writing for correct grammar, capitalization, spelling, punctuation, sentence structure, and paragraph structure. g) Use correct spelling for frequently used words, including common homophones. We will continue to practice and strengthen the SOLs taught in previous years, with a STRONG focus on content area vocabulary and "testing" vocabulary. Much of the word study will be vocabulary based and include many multiple meaning words and commonly misspelled or misunderstood words. We will also incorporate a variety of context clues activities, as this is also an area of weakness for students. |