Tefl.NET Forums

Hi all,

I'm new to TEFL, but it seems like an appropriate place to ask a quick question about teaching methods for young learners!

Specifically, I'm interested to know whether teachers still use the "word shapes" teaching method. These are the visual cues where the teacher draws a solid border around the "shape" of the word to help students identify the letters with ascenders and descenders (the "sticks" of tall letters and "tails" of letters that sink below the baseline).

I've spoken to a few primary school teachers who swear by the word shape / word wall method and others who say that word shapes are based on VERY outdated research. As with many pedagogical topics, there seems to be heated debate on wordshapes' effectiveness.

Any thoughts or suggestions? Do primary school teachers still use wordshapes as teaching aids?

Thanks in advance, looking forward to your feedback

Kind regards,

Darryl

I'm using two series of primary textbooks and reviewing another at the moment. One of them uses word shapes quite extensively in the workbook and the other two totally ignore it. With the limited time I have in class with my students, I've personally never found it any use at all.

Hi Alex,

Thanks for the reply! Would you be able to provide the author or publisher of the text using word shapes? I'd like to have a look.

Kind regards

I'm getting so confused I can't remember which is which, will post whenever I next come across it...

Anyway, it basically always comes down to matching the word and the word shape and then a picture, or possibly a colour word and word shape and then colouring. In my opinion, dull as well as ineffective!