Contact UsSpelling Ideas!
As the year rolls on our spelling patterns get more challenging. I want my students to have every chance for quality spelling practice because they need it daily in order to get enough time in to master it before the test. My focus has to be with my little readers, so I have a system in place to give my students a chance everyday for quality spelling interaction!
My solution to this issue is to integrate interactive activities into our guided reading rotations. Here’s me with a small guided reading group… (See how I am not worrying about spelling right now?)
While my group is reading with me, I have activities set to go for a week of spelling practice.
I have 5 different interactive activities in numbered drawers.
I always have a word sort but to be sure they are actually reading the words, Students must also match the picture to the words once the words have been sorted by pattern. That way I know they have to decode the word with the new spelling pattern.
Another activity we do with our words is build it, color it, write it. You can use letter tiles, stamps, or whatever you have for this one. I just placed boxes on the printables for any kind of building. Students color the spelling pattern or the vowel a certain color depending on what you want them focusing on that week.
A favorite activity is a dab it and write it book. I have 5 dollar store dabbers that I keep in the drawer with the books. Students can grab and go.
They love a marker so this trace, write, cut and match is a fun way to get practice. I have two different sheets in this drawer so they can practice both the AU and the AW.
Once students are more familiar with the words, they can pick, glue, and write sentences. This is a great activity to take a grade on. We work on our sentence writing as well as our spelling of the spelling words and word wall words on this one!
So how do you introduce the new words at the beginning of the week? I LOVE this part of our lesson!
One
way I introduce our new list of words is to play a game with them
around the rug whole group. I have the new words in a bucket and we play tisket tasket. This is just a song that I got from an old basal reading program. Students sing a song as they walk around the rug. When the song ends we pull a word out one at a time, we practice saying the new sound and then discuss unknown word meanings. This week with the AU AW sounds we had words like vault and law. These were great new words to define for impromptu vocab lessons!
When my students finish their interactive activities that correspond to our spelling pattern, the spelling practice does not stop there! Then they beg to get into our sight word sticks activities otherwise known as spelling sticks! Down in drawer 5 I keep our spelling sticks with different activities weekly for practice. (so super sneaky, no?)
They build a house with spelling sticks and write the remaining sticks inside the house that are in the same family.
On Wednesday this little cutie decided she wanted to do an extra spelling stick sort in her journal. I was so proud!
Such great word work activities!! 🙂
Love all these wonderful ideas!! I recently purchased your sight word sticks packet. I haven't had a chance to set it up, but am planning on getting it going over Spring Break. I am so excited to get it started!!! Thanks for a great product!!!
Another great post. I love the colors in your pocket chart! You can tell that all the kids are engaged in their work!
First, let me say that your math journals are fabulous!!! You also saved me with your post about your math centers! I was struggling with how to get is done and now we are on a roll!! What does your daily schedule look like? I am loving the post about spelling but how do you get it all in?? Thanks!
love the video's – such a great way to hook the kiddo's into the lesson and/or new concept. Thank you for sharing your great ideas 🙂
Love all these activities! Would you consider bundling the sets for an easier download? After reading the comments above, I am off to check out some of your older posts.
Thank you so much for these posts! I frequently have ideas but can't always sort out the details. Your posts always seem to clarify my thinking!
I like all of your activities, but I don't think I would want to consume so much paper or correct and sort so much paper. I try to use iPads or white boards when I can. How do you manage this?
Kimberley
First in Maine
You are so organized!! I love how you introduce new words with the song and game. I will have to try that! I also love the Electric Company videos; We used "Bossy R" this week… hilarious!
How do you organize everything? I read back to your post in 2011 about putting the centers in ziploc bags and putting them in tubs in your cupboards organized by category. Is this still the system you use? I feel so overwhelmed with all of the centers and games and would like to employ a better system of organizing everything. Just curious as to what you use! 🙂
I was just looking at your spelling centers and I love them! Have you thought about making some of these editable? I would love to use the write it, dab it books, or the trace it, write it, cut it activities, but would need to tweak them so they align to my districts curriculum.
I was wondering if you had a whole day schedule. I would love to do activities like this, but have a hard time fitting them in with everything else.
Thanks
Love this! How do you check for understanding with the kiddos that do the word sort? Do you have them leave the sort up for you to check after you meet with your reading groups?
I will DEFINITELY be buying the phonics bundle you just made after reading this post of how you use these as word work. Thank you so much! Also – silly question, but where did you get that tub that you keep all of your word work activities in?
Thanks,
Shelby
First Time Firstie