Word Coaching & Spelling Patterns

Reading the article by Clark (2004) a year ago would have really helped me out.  At the time, I was working on reading skills with a fourth grader at Pond Gap Elementary.  She'd often get stuck on big compound words.  The only thing I knew to say, though, was sound it out because that's what I was always told to do when I was learning to read.  It was difficult to see her get frustrated and shut down whenever sounding the word out didn't work.  I'd ultimately have to sound it out for her, but I hated the fact she wasn't learning on her own.  The ideas in the article like covering up parts of the word or asking her to find chucks or patterns in the big word would've really helped her reading develop.  Even though I couldn't help her as much, I feel much more prepared now to assist other student when they get stuck.  

Growing up I never really had an issue sounding out words like this particular girl did.  The only reason, I think, I didn't was because I could recognize the smaller words hiding in the bigger words.  When I was in school, I always hated spelling. All I ever felt like we did was copy words over and over and over again.  However, after reading Cunningham and Allington's (2011) ideas in chapter 5 for teaching spelling, I realized that my spelling lists in school were teaching me more than just memorization.  They were often divided into groups of words that had similar patterns like 'oo' or 'ake.'  There were also bonus words that were usually just compound words using that week's pattern.  Knowing these words helped me the most when it came to sounding out words while reading.  Even though I obviously learned from copying spelling lists, I think I would've enjoyed learning more if my teachers had used some of the activities the book suggests.  I know that all students learn differently, though.  Are memorization and copying techniques still beneficial to an extent in spelling lessons?  Will memorization come from doing activities other than simply studying word lists?

Here's a fun idea I found! Make a "chunkapillar" each time your class learns a new chunk.  Put it somewhere visible, so students can refer to it during their reading or writing.

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