Word Garden
When I first started calling this a “word garden,” I was thinking about the territory beginning readers need to cover when they learn to read. When students are first taught to sound out simple CVC words, they generally start with the most straightforward consonants and a few of the less confusable vowels. That might manifest as stripes and islands of booklets on a board that is mostly white. As students learn how to spell new sounds, I can imagine the excitement of “planting” those plots in the garden with colorful new booklets.
The ability to see territory which has not yet been covered is potentially significant. It gives a place to include function words, names, and other needed words, even before the words’ components have explicitly been taught. Here, words from the top hundred high-frequency list are written in bold. Showing that all words fit within the same framework helps convey the idea of a unified system, as well as making it easier to spot patterns and exceptions.
As I’ve mentioned, this prototype is pitched to a fairly advanced level. I would be very interested in helping develop a version for a kindergarten or first grade classroom. A beginner’s Word Garden would obviously emphasize simpler words, and probably include a few pictures. Scope and sequence of phonics instruction would impact the order in which words are listed. There’s a lot that would have to be to taken into account.
Meanwhile, I’m keen to get feedback on what I’ve done so far. I've started curating booklets for the long vowels, which means working out best practices for those tricky open syllables. So much fun!