Words Our Way Spelling Program

A Practical Look at Using Words Our Way Spelling Program in Your Classroom

Most spelling programs treat every student the same regardless of where they actually are developmentally. The Words Our Way Spelling Program was built around the idea that kids at different stages need fundamentally different word lists, not just harder versions of the same list. It is grounded in research from the National Literacy Laboratory at Murray State University, and it maps spelling development across predictable stages. The program itself is free, which helps a lot when you are outfitting multiple grade levels. Go to wordsweway.org and create a teacher account. The main dashboard gives you access to the word sort library, the assessments, and the word list generator. The interface is not especially fast, but it gets the job done. I would recommend downloading the assessment PDFs to your local folder right away because the site tends to get sluggish during the first week of school when everyone is signing up at once. Once you have an account, the next step is to assess your students. There is a diagnostic assessment available that places kids into one of several developmental spelling stages: pre-communicative, semiphonetic, phonetic, transitional, or pattern. Here is where things get interesting. Most people assume the assessment is just a quick check. It is not. I spent time with a third-grade student who scored well on the phonetic stage assessment but still needed support in the transitional stage. The test was designed to catch that gap. It includes nonword spelling items that reveal whether a student can apply phonological patterns or is just guessing. If you skip the nonword portion, you will misplace about a fifth of your class. I learned that the hard way in my second year of using this program.

How the Word Sorts Actually Work

The core of Words Our Way Spelling Program is the word sort. Students are given a set of words and asked to categorize them based on a specific spelling pattern. You pick the stage, the word family, and the sort type. There are closed sorts where students are given the categories upfront, and open sorts where they figure out the categories themselves. I use closed sorts for new patterns and open sorts when reinforcing something already taught. The word lists are generated from real usage data and children's inventories. That means the words are not pulled from thin air. They reflect how kids actually spell as they move through stages. The program also includes morphological sorts for older students, which introduce prefixes, suffixes, and base words. This is important because traditional spelling programs often ignore morphology entirely until high school, if ever. Research from Venezky and others shows that morphological awareness is a strong predictor of spelling development past the intermediate stages. One thing nobody really warns you about: the word sort PDFs sometimes render poorly if you print them from Chrome. I switched to Firefox for printing and have not had a single misaligned page since. It sounds trivial but it saves you from wasting half a class period dealing with formatting issues.

Setting Up a Weekly Routine

I run spelling on Mondays and Thursdays, thirty minutes each session. Monday is assessment and sort introduction. Thursday is review and a short spelling inventory check. The rest of the week, students work independently with their word lists. Here is the workflow I use: Monday morning: give a short word inventory for the current stage. This takes about ten minutes per student. I record the results and adjust the word lists accordingly. Then I introduce the word sort for the week. I model one sort item and then let them work in pairs. The pair work matters. Kids explain their reasoning to each other, and that verbalization strengthens their pattern recognition more than silent work ever did. Thursday: do a second inventory checkpoint for a subset of students. Track who is progressing, who is stuck, who needs a different stage. I keep a spreadsheet with stage placement, dates, and sort scores. It takes about five minutes per student to update. Over a semester, this spreadsheet becomes the most valuable tool you have for parent conferences and intervention referrals.

The program includes digital flashcards and games through Word Work activities. I do not use the games much. They are fine for early finishers but they do not replace the word sort. The sorts are where the actual learning happens. The games are more about repetition and engagement than pattern recognition.

Common Problems and What to Do About Them

Stage placement can be wrong. This happens more often than you would think. I had a fourth grader placed in the transitional stage who actually needed the phonetic stage. The diagnostic had a few ambiguous items. The workaround is to use the word sorts as a secondary check. If the student consistently misses patterns that belong to the phonetic stage, move them back. Stage placement is not permanent. It is a working hypothesis that you refine as you go. Another issue: some word sorts are too similar across stages. For example, the long vowel sorts in the phonetic and transitional stages overlap significantly. I found that the best approach is to teach the same sort pattern twice but with different word sets. This reinforces the concept without making the lesson feel repetitive. Students see the pattern again and they recognize it faster the second time around. That second exposure is where retention happens. There is also the problem of students finishing too quickly. Words Our Way Spelling Program gives you word lists sorted by stage, but it does not automatically differentiate within a stage. If you have three students at the transitional stage but they are at very different sublevels, you will need to manually adjust. I create parallel lists by swapping out two or three words that are slightly more advanced or slightly more supportive. It takes about ten minutes per week but it makes a noticeable difference in student engagement.

What This Program Does Not Do Well

It does not provide comprehensive reading instruction. Spelling and reading are linked, but Words Our Way is focused on spelling. If you are looking for a full literacy program, this is not it. It is a spelling supplement. You still need reading instruction, comprehension work, and writing practice alongside it. It does not have robust analytics. The word sort system records whether a student got a word right or wrong, but it does not give you growth metrics over time the way some commercial programs do. You have to build that yourself with spreadsheets or a simple tracking document. This is not a fatal flaw but it is something to be aware of if you expect the program to handle all the administrative work. The website can be slow during peak times. This is not unique to this program but it is real. If you are pulling materials during the first week of school, plan ahead. Download everything you need before the rush hits. I have wasted entire afternoons waiting for pages to load when the server was under heavy load.

Final Thoughts on Words Our Way Spelling Program

The program is free and research-based, which puts it ahead of most commercial spelling curricula in terms of developmental accuracy. It treats spelling as a cognitive process, not a memory test. That shift in perspective changes how you teach and how your students engage with words. The main investment is your time in tracking progress and adjusting word lists. If you are willing to put in that effort, it is one of the more reliable tools available for teaching spelling in a developmentally appropriate way.