Spelling

Tropical Storm Fay left us with branches to pick up, stories to tell and the new school year to begin again. I gave a pretest today to determine each students' spelling words for this week. The 15 words on the pretest correspond to the 15 words suggested as Spelling words in our new Reading Series.

After the pretest, each student receives 10 words to study for Thursday's Spelling Test. Their words are chosen from the words that each student misspells. If the student does not miss a total of 10 words in the 15 that are on the pretest, he/she receives a list of words that follow the pattern we are studying that week (2 examples of patterns: 1. short "a" words, like "crab" 2. words patterned Consonant/Vowel/Consonant/silent "e" also called CVCe words, like "like" ), also taken from the new Reading Series. I will staple the word list into their planners on Thursdays so that they have 7 days/nights to study. The numbers highlighted on the word list are the only words which count as part of the Spelling grade for each student. And, even though each student has only 10 words, these are 10 words that they do not know; it is not as easy as it sounds. Students should study their words daily.

Each student's word list is the same but the highlighted words for each student will be different. This might be called "differentiated" Spelling. There are many websites available for Spelling practice. But you can devise your own spelling practices...a little catsup smeared on a plate...call out the word...and your student writes the word with their finger on the plate.