Wow, I have been completely swamped with school, church, home....life. It's been too long since I've posted anything. Now that I have a student teacher (my first ever), I can actually get some things posted.
Well, I want to start by talking about spelling. I've changed the way I teach spelling this year. Last year I tried Scientific Spelling. I really liked it, but students didn't retain anything after the test was over. Another teacher told me about a book called Caught Ya!: Grammar With a Giggle by Jane Bell Kiester. In her book, she has a Spelling Killers list. They are mostly homophone with a few commonly misspelled words. Only a few are added each week while keeping the old ones on the list as well.
This list has been a life saver. I give spelling words every two weeks. My students also pick 5 words from their own writing to add to their list. I'll have to show you how I keep track of it all in a later post.
Anyway, this last week, we had receive, friend, believe, and weird on our list. We talked about the rule and spent the next several days practicing. I (or my student teacher) would write a word on the board with a blank for the ie or ei. Then, the students would write the word, filling in the missing letters, on their boards and hold them up for us to check.
They used white boards I made ages ago using shower board. I wrapped the edges in electrical tape. Of course, now they have all that fun duct tape and washi tape.
Anyway, they love doing this. It's amazing how I can get them to participate and enjoy it just by bringing out white boards and dry erase marker.Labels: Spelling
