Words Their Way with English Learners

One reality of today’s classrooms is the limited help available to teachers trying to support English learners’ literacy skills.  The educators and researchers who developed Words Their Way understand this challenge.  Their original text, a phenomenon in word study, provides the proven framework and application to allow students to develop literacy skills.  And now they apply this approach to teaching English learners. 

Based on the same solid research, Words Their Way with English Learners helps you determine what your students bring with them from their home languages, where their instruction in English orthography should begin, and how best to move these students through their development.

• Chapters 1 through 3 introduce you to the stages of spelling and reading development, the assessments to use, and the best ways to organize your classroom for word study. 
• Each subsequent chapter focuses on a specific stage of spelling, outlining the most appropriate and effective word study instruction for this audience, from the Emergent learner through readers and writers in the Derivational Relations stage. 
• Each of these chapters closes with a rich bank of classroom-proven word study activities that promise to engage your students, motivate them, and improve their oral and written abilities in English. 
• The Appendix at the back of Words Their Way with English Learners contains all the assessment tools necessary to get word study underway and offers word lists in Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Arabic; picture and word sorts; and game templates to advance word study instruction in diverse K—8 classrooms.

Word study can be a powerful instructional method for teachers and their English learning students.  With this text, you can evaluate students’ langage needs.  Empower your students to grasp this new language at the word level, building skills to understand how English differs from their primary language,and providing them with the skills to predict word meaning through spelling.  Words Their Way with English Learners will help you build vocabulary, spelling, and word recognition skills in your English learners, giving them the foundation to master their new language.

Donald R. Bear is director of the E. L. Cord Foundation Center for Learning and Literacy in the College of Education at the University of Nevada, Reno. As a former preschool, third, and fourth grade teacher, Donald extends his experience working with children who experience difficulties learning to read and write both in the center and in numerous outreach programs. His recent research includes the study of literacy development in different languages and the influence of first language and literacy knowledge in learning to read in another language. He and his colleagues work with many schools and districts to conduct literacy instruction workshops.

Lori Helman is Assistant Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.  Her research focuses on the reading and spelling development of students learning English as a new language.  Helman was a bilingual teacher, a district literacy coordinator, and a new teacher leader in her region before coming to higher education.  She teaches classes in reading development for diverse students, effective instruction for students with reading difficulties, and leadership skills for reading specialists.

 Marcia Invernizzi is a professor of reading education at the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia. Marcia is also the director of the McGuffey Reading Center, where she teaches the clinical practica in reading diagnosis and remedial reading. Formerly an English and reading teacher, she works with Book Buddies, Virginia's Early Intervention Reading Initiative (EIRI), and Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening (PALS).

Shane Templeton is Foundation Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Nevada, Reno, where he is Program Coordinator for Literacy Studies. A former elementary and secondary teacher, his research focuses on the development of orthographic knowledge. He has written several books on the teaching and learning of reading and language arts and is a member of the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary. He is author of the "Spelling Logics" column in Voices from the Middle, the middle school journal of the National Council of Teachers of English.

Francine Johnston is a former first grade teacher and reading specialist who learned about word study during her graduate work at the University of Virginia. She is now an associate professor in the School of Education at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she teaches courses in reading, language arts, and children's literature. Francine frequently works with regional school systems as a consultant and researcher. Her research interests include current spelling practices and materials as well as the relationship between spelling and reading achievement.

1. Word Study with English Learners and the Development of Orthographic Knowledge
2. Assessment
3. Word Study Organization with English Learners
4. Word Study for English Learners in the Emergent Stage
5. Word Study for English Learners in the Letter Name-Alphabetic Stage
6. Word Study for English Learners in the Within Word Pattern Stage
7. Word Study for English Learners in the Syllables and Affixes and Derivational Relations Stages

             Appendix