The Working with Words block focuses on how words work and the importance of learning the structures of sounds and words. Students work in whole class and small groups to manipulate sounds and words at their grade level. Students in kindergarten are developing their phoneme awareness through rhymes, blending and segmenting syllables and sounds while first graders are connecting those soundss with letters and letter chunks. Beginning in second grade, students learn prefixes and suffixes and their meaning. Word origins are discovered and applied.
All grades use a word wall for high frequency words and words that are most often misspelled.
Writing Guilford County has implemented a county-wide writing plan to ensure students' success in all kinds of writing. All types and purposes of writing take place daily in every class at Northwood Elementary, and students are celebrated as real authors. This block is real-world reading. This is where students in all grades pick books on their independent reading levels and read silently for 20 to 30 minutes daily. While the students are reading, teachers are conducting individual reading conferences.