Word Work Wednesday is relatively new in my classroom. Previously we'd strictly been doing vocabulary work associated with our reading text. Much of the instruction with those exercises involved blends, VV, or CVVC types of combinations. While that is moderately helpful for kids, ensuring that are recognizing letter combinations so that they can pronounce them appropriately, it isn't enough.
I had also realized that I wasn't doing enough to help my kids in vocabulary instruction. Part of EALR 1 (Vocabulary) is GLE 1.2, building wide vocabulary. Getting more specific, part of that is understanding Greek and Latin roots. While I'm not perfect with my instruction involving those, I certainly am doing more. Word Work Wednesday is a big part of that.
For homework Tuesday night kids get a list of 4-8 different roots. They compile a list of words having those roots. After that they define 2 from each list, and lastly predict what they think the root means. We then share our words, a few definitions, and predicted roots (and actual roots) when we come in on Wednesday. An example would look like this: "-gress" (movement) would have progress, egress, aggressive, regress, congress. They look up progress which means to move forward, and regress which means to move backwards. Ah! Movement!
It doesn't always work cleanly. If you looked up congress (coming together as a group) then you might be a little fuzzy. The kids have been really excited about it, particularly sharing words and making predictions. I have kids selecting other kids to share words, and the overall engagement is really high. I can't say that it is the best way to teach vocabulary, but having kids excited about word work is fantastic.
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