Spelling

We will review words, but we will not take any more spelling tests this year.


We practice spelling everyday through a procedure called "White Board Spelling" This is modeled spelling where I say a word, we say the word together and students repeat the word on their own.  They write the word, I write the word, they check their spelling and letter formation in comparison "Check yours against mine." We the read and spell the word together.  "Spell it" Students point to the word and read the word.  They point to each letter and say the letter name outloud.  We then read the word again.  I then say "erase." Students are to quickly erase his/her white board in one to two swipes and then back in "Ready Position" This means boards are clean, markers and erasers are set down. "Eyes" means eyes on me for the next word.

I will give a spelling test on Fridays.  I will not be giving an exact list to practice, although we will practice all of the words throughout the week during white board spelling.  I feel this is a more accurate assessment of who clearly understands stretching the word skill we are learning than simple memorization of a few words. This weeks words will all be single syllable words with the short a vowel.  Examples of possible words are cat, bat, fan, man, Dan, Sam, etc.  I do expect names to begin with a capital letter and all other letter to be lower case.  We will practice this throughout the first few months of school.  At times, you may notice a 1 or a 2 on the top right side of your child's spelling test.  I grade both tests the same, although test 1 is an extension with more challenging words.  I may use A and B versus one and two. If so, A will will be the extended version.