Curriculum Materials
The Word Work curriculum covers the major Anglo-Saxon spelling patterns: consonants, consonant blends and digraphs, short and long vowels, vowel digraphs, and complex words. The curriculum is laid out in an explicit sequence: phoneme awareness and single consonants, short vowels, and finally long vowels. The emphasis is on the productive spelling patterns and on vowels. Less productive patterns are incorporated in the main strands as options.
The program is designed to mesh with Project READ Plus, but can also stand alone. Materials from most basals and supplementary phonics packages can support the program, but it is incompatible with the linear instructional methods in these packages. The program provides a decoding-spelling strand that is compatible with literature-based methods, but it does not use stories for the decoding-spelling curriculum, and it does teach spelling patterns by studying isolated word groups.
