Word Sorts in Skills Block

 Skills Block is about thirty minutes at the beginning of each day when we teach the nuts and bolts of the English Language. In this block of time,  students may be learning about punctuation, capital letters, vowels, blends, parts of speech, antonyms, synonyms, spelling patterns, and/or special sounds including various letter combinations. This is everything not taught explicitly in Reader's or Writer's Workshops. This unit of time was found necessary for children to understand some of the mechanics of reading and writing and in turn, supplement reading and writing activities. We usually have a "Word Sort" that goes with our focus of the week. This week was "wh" and  "th".  These activities come from the book Words Their Way which is a developmental spelling program. Students work on word sorts daily in order to improve their understanding of the written language.