Spelling Procedures
Every Tuesday students will pre-test on fourteen words that follow a general spelling
convention and test on their list the following Monday. I usually choose these fourteen words
from the basal story list, however; I may choose words that correlate with a current English
skill. For example, if we are studying plural nouns in English I may choose words with plural
endings s, es, ies, or ves.
Once the pre-test words have been called the students will use their highlighters to grade
their own tests. Once students have completed this step they will raise their hands for me to
spot check the self-graded pre-test.
Each week students will be provided a list of "shopping" words. These are words that follow
the same general spelling convention as the pre-test words but may be of more difficulty.
Students will replace each correctly spelled word with a word from the shopping list. For
example, if a child correctly spelled eight words on the pre-test, he will replace them with
eight words from the shopping list. The six words spelled incorrectly will remain on the
student's list for the week. The eight shopping list words plus the four incorrectly spelled
pre-test words will comprise the student's list for the week, giving them a total of 14 words.
Research indicates that students are motivated to learn when they have more control over
their learning. Allowing students to individualize their spelling words each week not only gives
them ownership of their work, but it hopefully prevents students from studying words all
week that they have already mastered. I also give homework options for each night of
spelling practice so that my students have some control over their work and to help keep
things exciting. I will revise the homework list for the spring semester after allowing
students to share new ideas for homework options and finding out which activities they
did/din't enjoy. Lastly, research also shows that when students in grade three are given more
than 12-14 words they are simply memorizing words for the end-of-week test. It has been my
experience that students are able to make a one hundred on the weekly test but are later
unable to spell those very same words in everyday writing. By limiting the list to fourteen
words we have the opportunity to study the spelling patterns of each word, which will help
students to not only better retain the spelling, but to be able to spell other unknown words of
the same spelling generalization.
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