What skill does word work primarily focus on teaching students?

Word work primarily focuses on teaching students decoding and vocabulary skills. This practice involves helping students recognize and understand the relationships between letters, sounds, and words. Decoding is the ability to convert written words into their spoken forms. It involves phonemic awareness, phonics, and the understanding of how letters are combined to form words.

Additionally, word work emphasizes vocabulary development, which is critical for reading comprehension. Expanding students' vocabulary allows them to understand and engage with texts more effectively, fostering a love for reading and enhancing overall literacy skills.

While creative writing, fiction writing, and grammar and punctuation are important aspects of language arts education, they do not capture the primary focus of word work, which is specifically aimed at enhancing students' foundational reading skills through targeted exercises in decoding and vocabulary.