A Peek Into Our Week...
This was our full first week having Word Study for this year. Teachers often hear, “My child is a terrible spelling, when do you work on that?” During Word Study we work on several different types of word work, how to spell words correctly, how to correctly use them in your writing and how to read them in a text. At the beginning of the year each child was given a spelling inventory, by looking at their mistakes and patterns of misspellings I am able to identify where they are developmentally as a speller. Using the program, “Words Their Way” students work on a list of words each week that specifically targets an area they have demonstrated a need for growth in. Throughout the week students have different assignments with words. Through these multiple and varied exposures they gain experience spelling the words correctly and using them in meaningful sentences. See our weekly schedule below:
Monday- cut apart words and sort them based on their pattern (ie- prefixes, vowel sounds, endings, etc)
Tuesday- sort words by their part of speech (as of right now our only categories for this are noun, verb, adjective, and ‘other’)
Wednesday- write meaningful sentences that show your understanding of the kind of word it is and it’s definition
Thursday- tactile centers- more about this below :)
Friday- Buddy tests
This week was the first time we have used our Word Study centers. In each of them students have some type of object to use to ‘make’ their words. So far I have introduced 4 different ones. As the year progresses I will add new ones to keep them interested. This week your child made their words out of clay, pipe cleaners, magnetic letters, or square letter tiles. Several years ago I attended a wonderful workshop at the Hill Center in Durham about Spelling and Handwriting and their multiple layers of importance. The most important thing I learned that day was that offering ALL students varied experiences with correctly spelling developmentally appropriate leads to much more transfer to unknown words. Here are some of our classmates “making” words.
No comments:
Post a Comment