Becoming fully literate is absolutely dependent on fast, accurate recognition of words in texts, and fast, accurate production of words in writing so that readers and writers can focus their attention on making meaning. Letter-sound correspondences, phonics, spelling patterns, high frequency word recognition, decoding, word meanings, and other word attributes are a basis of written word knowledge. Designing a word study program that explicitly teaches students necessary skills and engages their interest and motivation to learn about how words work is a vital aspect of any literacy program. Students need hands-on opportunities to manipulate word features in a way that allows them to generalize beyond isolated, individual examples to entire groups of words that are spelled the same way. Excelling at word recognition, spelling and vocabulary is not just a matter of memorizing isolated rules and definitions. The best way to improve reading and writing is to have multiple opportunities to examine words out of context. The most effective instruction in phonics, spelling, and vocabulary links word study to the text being read, provides word-level skills, and multiple hands- on practice and application activities. Word study teaches students how to look at words so they can construct an ever-deepening understanding of how written words work.