Happy Friday
everyone! Wondering why we didn’t have a spelling test this week? We’re heading
in a NEW direction and have decided to make some exciting changes in our word
work program in 3rd grade! We had noticed that while the students
are really good at memorizing the 20 words on our spelling lists for a weekly
test, they struggled with applying these rules and patterns to other words,
and/or had trouble spelling these words correctly in their writing. In order to be
responsive to these struggles, we are changing our word study work so that it
focuses on applying rules to as many words as possible and also focuses on spelling
words correctly in our daily writing. We’ve been trying out these changes in
the classroom and I am thrilled with what I’m seeing!
Here are some key
points to our new word work routine:
- A few days a week we will be using
sound cards with the students—you may remember
these from 2nd grade. We will be adding to the deck of cards
all year so that the students will be continually reviewing rules and patterns
from this year and previous years so that we can retain these skills.
- The first two days of the week will
focus on learning new patterns and applying them to many words at varying
levels of difficulty. For example, when we
learned the ‘oi’ pattern during the
first week, some students brainstormed words like coin and boil while others
got to disappointment and moisture--students are so excited when they apply
these patterns to more challenging words.
- On our third day we will do dictated
sentences where we can apply this week’s patterns along with reviewing previous
weeks’ patterns. This will also give
us time for some grammar review.
- ·Thursday and Friday are spent writing
stories where we focus on applying all of the spelling (and grammar) rules to
our writing—first with a partner and then
independently.
Students will no longer be bringing home a list
of 20 words to memorize for a Friday test. They will get a new
rule, pattern, and/or word part that will be the focus for the week’s word
study work. There will be an
at-home activity that will take the place of the old spelling contract that
will need to be completed at some point during the week. The formal
assessment for the report card will be done in the same way as it has always
been assessed since the standard is for spelling correctly in daily writing;
however, students will be a little better prepared for this since our focus is
being switched to spelling in our writing. Informal assessments will be taken by
teachers viewing the word lists, dictated sentences, and writing—not
for grades, but so that we can see what we are doing well and what we need to
work on more. We see so much
potential for this change to improve students’ spelling where it counts—in their daily writing. We are very excited about how the rest
of this year will go!
