I am quite grateful for my main placement. The school that I am at is really trying hard to get everyone up to speed with reading. And what is nice, is that all the third grade teachers are on board and very supportive of each other. During my September experience, the students were given daily spelling tests. This was done until they finished the no excuse words up until third grade. My main teacher would look at their spelling journals to see how the students were doing. At the end of the second grade words, if she saw that students were having difficulties with their spelling, those students were asked to go to the back of the room to start working on the words they missed with my master teacher. I would be at the front of the class giving them the rest of the spelling test. As Fox mentions on page 129, we spent about 15 minutes each day working on word work. When they were finished with the no excuse word list, the teacher and I went through the journals. The words that they got wrong, they had to correct and do a rewrite of the word 5 times on a white board, write it in their journal once, cover up the word, write it again and then be quizzed by their elbow partner. When I went back into the classroom at the end of October for a day, they had just started a workbook on word families. This booklet is for both spelling and phonics using letter patterns. I was really glad to make that connection with and have a better understanding of it after reading chapter 5.
Since I am not in the third grade classroom now, I am not able to see her make her adjustments for the students reading from the G books. How do you choose word families for the class and not make it too easy for the above standard students and not so hard for the below standard readers? Depending on the school district, you might not have an extra body in the classroom to help you. How do you decide what to choose and how to teach it? Do you separate the students into groups?
I'm glad that you are all working on spelling, as we've read a lot about how not stumbling over words can make a child a more proficient reader. They way that my MT differentiates the spelling lists is this:
ReplyDeleteIn September we gave all the kids a spelling test. For those who missed less that 5 words, they moved onto the next spelling test, and so on. The test is set up in a way to show what word patterns the kids are missing. That way you can make groups based on what types of spelling words they need practice with. In their word work groups the kids are given a list of words that they then have to sort into categories. For instance, the lower level readers had a sort with -at, -op, and -ad endings to sort. They also had pictures of these words to put in the sort columns, which really seemed to help out the ELL students. If that's not what your MT is doing we can look at my MT's material if you're interested. Good luck!
My MT uses Words Their Way, which I just love! Like Gertie's MT, my MT gives students a pre-test to split them into ability groups (not always a good thing but I think very appropriate for spelling). Then each group works on a set of words together each week. I really like how this program helps children make their own sense of the words and find patterns. It really gets them thinking about words.
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