We believe that the hands-on word sorting approach to word study is invaluable to you and your students. These stage-specific companion volumes to Words Their Way: Word Study for Phonics, Vocabulary, and Spelling Instruction provide a complete curriculum of reproducible sorts and detailed directions for the teacher working with students in each stage of spelling development, from emergent through derivational relations.

Designed to help teachers working with transitional readers in the within word pattern stage of spelling development (Grades 1 – 4), the sorts in this companion volume help students begin contrasting long and short vowels and sorting words by grammatical and semantic features. The book begins by reexamining short- and long-vowel sounds with picture sorts, moving on to word sorts to thoroughly examine vowel patterns and assess students’ understanding of short- and long-vowel patterns. The text moves on to dipthongs and other ambiguous vowel sounds, and finally to complex consonants and consonant clusters, contractions, inflectional endings and homophones.