Word Work Choice–Write the Room

In Janet's room, the children have had extensive exposure to these materials, as well as practice moving in the room. Pre-teaching both of these components prevents the need for exploration time and allows the focus to be on writing. We have all experienced times in our classrooms when we introduced materials as tools before giving children ample time to explore with them. Inevitably we ended up with ineffective practice time. The pre-teaching and practice of how to move about the room produces automaticity of independent behaviors.

Controlling the number of children who do Word Work is easily managed by Janet as she adds only three sets of materials to the two sets already at Word Work. This will allow 5 students at a time to practice this potentially noisy Daily 5 choice.

Janet ends the introductory portion of the lesson without having children model correct and incorrect ways of doing Word Work. Because they are so young and she doesn't want them to confuse the correct behaviors with incorrect ones, she instead takes a quick body break. They join her in a song and a poem before refocusing on the 10 Steps to Independence at step 4 and 5.