What I did with my 2nd & 3rd grade students is have a print-rich
environment which gave them many resources to look at words and spell
them correctly. Anything that was visible was basically a "no excuses"
word that needed to be spelled correctly. I did not do a word wall, but
instead had lists of "category words" here and there..... math words on
the wall above the math materials, people words on a cabinet door,
"thematic" words near the categorized book bins, etc. I also had
laminated lists of high frequency words that just stayed on all the
tables. I think I had the "first 50" on one side and the "second 50" on
the other side. They were not allowed to misspell these words in their
writing. I did some "whole class" word work on a regular basis, looking
at patterns or chunks, but the whole spelling list thing just got
dropped somewhere along the line, and my life was oh, so easier!
Regarding phonetic spelling (a term I used in the 90s instead of the
dreaded and misunderstood "invented spelling"), I had no problem with
this. What concerned me more was when students continued to write
things like "gril" for "girl" which indicated to me that they were NOT
using phonetic structures to help them spell.
Renee
On Jun 10, 2012, at 10:04 PM, Francie Kugelman wrote:
This year I focused on recognizing correctly spelled words and words
that
were spelled correctly in context in a sentence. I created
differentiated
spelling lists from the Treasures basal reader program: Approaching, On
Level, and Beyond. The answer guide to the multiple choice tests were
all
the same for the three levels.
It was a long and arduous process creating the weekly lists (25 words
for
each level, many were repeats.) I had two teacher friends pitch in
and we
shared the work.
One aspect I liked about a written spelling test where you circle the
correctly spelled word for that sentence is I no longer had to give the
traditional spelling test on Friday. Absentee students could take the
test on Monday. I never entered the scores, but would note which
students
needed extra help with studying and spelling. There is no report card
grade for spelling, but I believe correctly spelled words hand written
in
an essay are important. Students who struggle with spelling need to
learn
some spelling patterns so they stop spelling phonetically.
It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be
entirely uneducated.
~ Alec Bourne
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