Reflecting on Wordle, Laura King

Recently, ASCD caught the Wordle craze with its blog post by Nell K. Duke, University of Michigan professor and instructional strategies expert (blog post found here).

In case you haven't heard of or played Wordle yet, it is an on-line word game that challenges participants to guess a five-letter word in six tries. Developed by Josh Wardle, the game's popularity has grown exponentially - to the point where the New York Times recently bought the game to add to their suite of puzzles.  A quote from Duke's article suggests that "studying how to be successful with Wordle can be helpful to educators because it can remind us of some key points about effective phonics and spelling instruction" - which are below: 

1. Some letters are more common than others.
2. The position of letters in a word matters.
3. Letters and sounds don’t have a one-to-one match.
4. Vocabulary knowledge is important to word reading and spelling.
5. Phonics and spelling can be engaging.

Duke elaborates on each point, reminding us that effective phonics and spelling instruction requires carefully designed, explicit teaching combined with volume reading, vocabulary building, and high levels of engagement. 

So, if you have or soon do give Wordle a try, good luck! But is it luck? Reflect a bit on how the experience illustrates the big ideas of word study, all in a little five-letter word. Feel free to check out the resources below, for other wordle-related ideas/resources.


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