spelling

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Home : 2003 : January : 3

spelling
By Tia

Sounds like I'm in the minority, but I'll bite. I don't give my students spelling homework--I give plenty of reading, math, language, and science enrichment homework.

On Monday, I go through their spelling words, pointing
out spelling rules; we talk about word families and affixes; and I often have them create clues to remember how words that are not spelled phonetically are spelled. Ie: field is ie--just think of a fIEld on fIrE. Fire is i then e, so is field. I then have them write the list 1x using a particular directive (alphabetically, easy to hard, categories--like all hard O words, all plurals...)

and then they write a take-home list that they take home and practice from.

They are supposed to practice their spelling words every night at home for at least 10 minutes--we have had much discussion on how some people have a good visual memory and therefor are better spellers and may not need as much time practicing as others, and vice versa. Parents were also notified (in person at our Parent Back-to-School Night) at the beginning of the year about my homework expectations.

On Wednesdays, I give the students an assignment (usually a worksheet that came with our spelling curriculum text). Many of the things we do with the spelling words meet reading standards--analogies, affixes, word families, context clues....

And then we have the test on Friday. I give one grade for Wednesday's assignment and double the grade for the test.