Words Their Way and the Science of Reading: What Actually Happens in the Classroom
Words Their Way (WTW) is a word study curriculum originally built around developmental spelling patterns. It sorts students into stages based on their spelling inventories and gives them pattern-based activities to work through. The current edition, often called Words Their Way: Word Study for Phonics, Vocabulary, and Spelling Instruction, is organized around five stages: emergent, letter name-alphabetic,WithinWords, pattern, and derived rule. Each stage has corresponding word sorts, activities, and assessments. The program is widely adopted in elementary schools across the US and parts of Canada. This is the question I get asked most often, and the answer is not clean. Words Their Way contains elements that align with the Science of Reading—specifically its explicit, systematic phonics instruction tied to developmental stages, its use of phonemic awareness activities, and its focus on decoding patterns. The later editions have been revised to be more aligned with research on alphabetic principle instruction and phonics scope and sequences. However, the program also carries baggage from its origins. The original framework was built on a theory of spelling development that has been questioned by some researchers in the SoR community. The invented spelling component, where early-stage students are encouraged to spell words phonetically before being corrected, is one area where WTW and strict Science of Reading principles diverge. Some districts use WTW as their phonics and word study component within a broader SoR-aligned curriculum. Others use it as a supplemental tool alongside a program likeFundations, Wilson, or Heggerty. There is no single correct way to position it. The real issue is how it gets implemented. A teacher who uses WTW strictly as a phonics-driven word study tool with careful attention to sound-to-letter correspondence will get results consistent with SoR research. A teacher who treats the spelling inventory as a diagnostic gateway and then lets students sort words without explicit phonemic awareness and decoding practice is drifting into a more balanced literacy approach. The program itself is modular enough to support both implementations.
I ran into a specific problem last year when a district asked me to evaluate whether their WTW implementation was Science of Reading compliant. They had been using it for three years and their third-grade benchmark scores were stagnant. The issue turned out to be that teachers were assigning word sorts based purely on spelling inventory results without first ensuring the students had the phonemic awareness skills to manipulate the sounds in those words. The sorts were happening, but the foundational skill was missing. The workaround was straightforward: I had them add a five-minute daily phonemic awareness routine using a program like Heggerty before any word sort activity. Within six weeks, the sorts actually started sticking. Students who previously just memorized the visual pattern of words were beginning to internalize the phonetic structure. That said, the district still needed to supplement with a more explicit phonics scope and sequence for students who were significantly below grade level. Here is something most people who are new to this don't realize. The developmental stages in Words Their Way are not the same as the skill levels you see in a Science of Reading phonics scope. WTW stages describe where a student's spelling knowledge typically lands, while a SoR-aligned phonics sequence tells you exactly which sound-spelling patterns to teach in what order. They are related but not interchangeable. Using a spelling inventory as your sole guide for phonics instruction will leave gaps. I have seen teachers skip digraphs and blends because their inventory data suggested students were ready for vowel teams, when in fact those students were just better at memorizing patterns than understanding the underlying phonetic system. Another counter-intuitive point: the WithinWords stage, which is where many students spend the most time, is also where the program is most vulnerable to losing fidelity to phonics principles. This is the stage where vocabulary and morphology start getting emphasized, and it is easy to slide into teaching word families as visual patterns rather than as phonetic structures. The derived rule stage introduces Latin and Greek morphemes, which is great, but only if the phonemic foundation is solid first. I recommend using the WTW assessments as a starting point, not an endpoint. After you identify where a student is, cross-reference with a phonics scope like the one in the Simple View of Reading or Scarborough's Rope to make sure nothing critical is being skipped.
The program has real limitations. The spelling inventory was normed over twenty years ago and does not reflect current demographic data. The word sorts, while useful, tend to emphasize common English patterns and underrepresent less frequent but important phonetic structures. Some educators report that students who excel at sorting can still struggle with fluent reading because the program does not explicitly build automaticity in decoding. I have found that pairing WTW with a program focused on decodable texts and fluency practice addresses this gap fairly well. The combination typically takes about 45 minutes per day, split between the word study block and the decodable reading block. If you are looking for the official materials, Words Their Way is published by Pearson and available through their website and major educational retailers. The teacher editions include the spelling inventories, sort cards, and activity guides. Many districts purchase the digital subscription through Pearson's MyLab platform, which includes audio recordings of the sorts and progress monitoring tools. The program is not free, and the costs add up quickly if you are buying for an entire grade level. Some teachers recreate sorts themselves using free resources, which works fine for the pattern-based activities but loses the structured assessment component. The bottom line is that Words Their Way can work within a Science of Reading framework if you are deliberate about how you use it. It is not a complete program on its own. It provides a solid word study structure but needs to be embedded in a curriculum that also includes explicit phonics instruction, phonemic awareness practice, and decodable text exposure. Without those elements, you are giving students a spelling program and calling it reading instruction. With them, it becomes a useful tool for helping students notice and internalize the patterns of English orthography.
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