"Doing Words," ages 5-7 (a posting by Lisa Cadora)

Last Friday (October 21) at Great River, I worked with the "Youngers" on a version of Charlotte Mason's Transcription and Dictation that I came across in my Language and Literacy grad program. I read of the work of Sylvia Ashton-Warner, a New Zealand-born educator who worked with the indigenous people of New Zealand, the Maoris, in helping them develop what she called a "key vocabulary." This vocabulary, built on the people's "native imagery," formed the basis for imparting all aspects of orthography (written language) -- letter formation, spaces between words, capitalization, punctuation, grammar, etc. Sylvia's ideas were later developed into a program called "Doing Words" by Katie Johnson.

The idea is that in listening to children's spontaneous narration of events in their lives, the adult teaching them can pick out (or have the child pick out) the one word that sums up the experience. This word is often a noun or verb (of course the child doesn't know this and need not at this point) that captures the most emotionally charged point of the narration. It's the word that soaks up all the other details of the story.
Once the word is decided upon, the teacher writes the word slowly, deliberately on sentence strip, drawing the sounds of the word out to match the letters she writes. He models correct formation of letters and leads the child in the appropriate strokes as they trace the letters with the index finger of their dominant hand, or later hold a pencil correctly to do so.

The student then "reads" the word to the teacher and to 2-3 other students, then places it in the basket to be passed around later so that each child can find again his word and read it to the class. Words are then filed in individual envelopes or ziplock bags for each child. ANY WORDS THAT ARE NOT REMEMBERED AT THE END OF THE DAY WHEN THE BASKET IS PASSED ARE LATER DISCARDED. These words have not proved significant enough to be useful to the child.

Envelopes or ziplocks that contain each individual child's accumulated words are gone through once or twice a week and culled for forgotten words. These cards are discretely eliminated so as not to upset the child. While the teacher is working with children one-on-one to get their words the next day, others may get their envelopes out and use their words to illustrate pictures or to tell the stories from which they come to other students.

The teacher refers to students' words during other writing and language experiences of the day as they surface. (S)he may pull a student's word to talk about a certain spelling, or have all student reach into their envelopes to see if they have a word that starts with 't', for example, or has a vowel pattern or 'ea'. Students can put their words together to form sentences or pull their words when they need spellings of them or similar words. There are endless possibilities for these words' use in other language activities.

As children become proficient at writing correct letter forms and sound-letter association, the teacher will enlist them in getting their word down on the sentence strip, guiding their handwriting and collaborating on spelling. (A word about spelling--do not make it all a matter of phonics. English orthography incorporates some consistent letter-sound correspondence; the remaining correspondences have too many exceptions to be remembered by 'rules'. Recalling what the word LOOKS like as well as using what it SOUNDS like helps children develop a visual recall of words they have read in meaningful contexts and lets them explore spelling patterns that have more to do with parts of speech and print consideration than phonics. Help a child spell a word by saying "What does it look like?" and "Where could you see it?" as much as you help them by saying "Sound it out.")

Of course, the next step is the child giving the teacher more than just one word. An entire sentence is next, written collaboratively. After this, one can move onto lined pages with space for illustrations, and then into journals.

My next "Doing Words" session with the Youngers will begin with them finding and "reading" their names, then placing these in zip-log bags. Next, I'll solicit a narration on some common subject from one or two children, modeling getting The Word from them, and then I'll ask parents present to work with 1-2 children in that manner.