Andrianna Boykin

READ 436
Professor Sullivan
30 April 2019
Word Study Minilesson
For my word study lesson, I did a classic blind sort. I worked with two groups, the first being just

two students and the second being around seven students. Each group was given a set of words without

the titles and were tasked with cutting and sorting them out. With both groups, I wasn’t given an

opportunity to pick out the word sets they were given. Due to this, I was not sure if I even knew the

proper groupings for the words. It also seems that the class only does word study every other week or

so. The groupings do not seem to be related to the reading groups.

The first group went much smoother for a few reasons. They had clear groups where they had

root words and root word + suffix (tion). I had them group them however they felt made the most sense

to them. The first student grouped her words by matching them together based on root word. For

example, she paired collect and collection together, affect and affection together and so on. She did this

even without a clear understanding of the terms “root/base word” or suffix/prefix. The other student

seemed to catch on as the first student began to make connections. Then, as I began to ask them

questions, I noticed the limit of their understandings. It seems the second student, understood that the

words were different, but could not exactly pinpoint why. When asked how affect was different from

affection, he constantly referred to affection as having “more words” rather than more letters. Just 5

minutes before this, we did a picture walk through a new book we were reading where this student was

asked to locate the suffix of the word “speechless”. I thought that since he had just done it, he would be

able to do it again. I spent about 10 minutes trying to get him to say that affection had a suffix of “tion”

and a root/base word of “Affect”. I even had him go back to “speechless” and had him identify the suffix
and root word of that one as he had before. Then, I connected it back to “affection” and he was able to

understand the similarities.

After we went over the differences between the words, I asked if there were any other ways

they could group the words. The both jumped at the chance, rearranging the words in a different way.

They both seemed to be able to group all of the words with suffixes together and the root words

together. After they got their two groups, I had them get their iPads and go onto seesaw. Then, I had

them take a picture of their groupings and write a sentence on how they grouped the words and why.

The second group was much larger with more groups of words. A few of them grouped the

words in similar ways (“oa”, long “o”, short “o”) but others seemed to be genuinely confused. One

student was struggling, but it was mainly due to his frustration at the activity. He didn’t like having so

much freedom and was clearly uncomfortable with having to have so much responsibility. This is a

student who I have heard say “I am not answering because I don’t want to be wrong”. I believe his

uncertainty was stemming from this mentality. That being said, this method could stress some students

out if they aren’t used to it, for example, at the very beginning of the year. As I was doing this lesson, I

felt a little lost as I wasn’t sure how long I should give them before telling them the correct groups. I also

tried to use one student as an example for the others. I think next time, I would make sure that I know

the groups then tell them how long they have to make the groups before I tell them.

In my weekly literacy plan, I have the students do a variety of throughout the week. I had seen

teachers creating a weekly schedule and each group starts on a different day and cycles through the

weekly schedule. The activities throughout the week consist of a blind sort, drawing a picture for any

new words they don’t understand, finding the words in the dictionary and a spelling test.