What Renee describes below is also how I do spelling in my class. When I taught first grade my students had no more than 5 words on their individual spelling lists. Now, that I'm teaching grade 2 I think I will top it off at 7 unless, as Renee says, some of the more efficient kids can handle a couple more. I also had a contract and the kids had choices for activities they could do to practice their words. I think I had 7 choices and they could do all 7 during the week if they had time. On Friday they paired up with someone and gave each other a test. The words the student spelled correctly went on their personal must-spell list. Any words missed would be carried on to the next week. Elisa
Elisa Waingort Grade 2 Spanish Bilingual Dalhousie Elementary Calgary, Canada First of all, just because your colleague says something, especially when it's an opinion, that doesn't mean you have to follow along. :-) When I taught third grade, I had individual spelling lists that the kids kept in their reading/writing folders on an index card. The words that went on there were words from their own writing that were common or phonetic words that I felt they should know how to spell. When they got to a certain number of words, they made a spelling contract that lasted a week. They wrote the words on the contract and I kept the index card. Students gave each other their spelling tests. The number of words depended on the students. "Higher" students had about 12 words, while "lower" students had about 8 or so words. Was it confusing? Yes and no. I had a special calendar that was ONLY for spelling with kids' names on it and at the end of each day I reminded those who had a spelling test the next day. When I stopped doing individual spelling lists, I started doing words with patterns. I think this had something to do with either Rebecca Sitton or Diane Snowball. I don't remember any more. But I would take word parts (i.e., "igh" and as a class we would make word lists with these parts (i.e., bright, light, fright, night, high, sigh, sight, frightful, delightful, brightness, etc) and then what I would do is assign about eight of these words for everyone and let kids choose four or six more for themselves. Renee "The test of a good teacher is not how many questions he can asks his pupils that they will answer readily, but how many questions he inspires them to ask which he finds hard to answer." ~ Alice Wellington Rollins
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