Words Their Way. This program focussing on phonics, and spelling. It is used in upper primary year 5-8 and although an American company, an Australian version is available. This software allows teachers to link directly to the Australian curriculum, keep individual records for students and is synthetic based as it incorporates not only phoneme knowledge but grapheme knowledge also. A teacher must be confident with phonemes and graphemes to incorporate this literacy program.
The program provides teachers with interactive activities for students, along with a professional development tool kit. This includes; digital learning material, online diagnostic tools and space for records, interactive word sorts, games and videos.
The language acquisition theory implemented here is Halliday’s ++ model. Learning About Language along with the bottom-up model as it is ability based for the individual and has a focus on the construction of the English Language. This allows students to explore letter-sound relationships and word order.
I believe this would be handy for a large classroom with allowance for diversity and different levels for each student.
I have asked Teacher A what would be a con about this program and her response “There are no cons”