I had some truly amazing teachers. My parents sent me to a private, Christian school from daycare through sixth grade, a public school my seventh grade year, then back to a private, Christian school from eighth until graduation.
When I think of my first and second grade teachers, I am especially impressed with the control and ease they managed our class, as well as the level of instruction that they were able to accomplish. Truly astounding, considering our first grade class had approximately 30 and our second roughly the same amount. They had no planning period, no parapro, no computer system. They alone were responsible for instruction from the moment we stepped through their door until we were safely in our cars.
I especially think of my second grade teacher, Miss Hoover, as I embark on this journey. First grade is kind of a blur except those rare moments here and there. But second grade is crystal clear, and I often think, "What did Miss Hoover do to teach us _______?"
I vaguely remember first grade spelling books- thin, bright green paperback books with a frog on the front- spelling lists complete with sight words in the front of the text with poetry in the back. My poor copy was dog-eared by the end of September and beyond pitiful by May.
Second grade's books, though, were thick, yellow and had room to practice the spelling words in various ways, as well as journal entries to write on weekly basis and poetry at the back. By second grade I'd learned to take great pride in caring for my books. It also helped that parents had to put clear contact paper on each book to help keep the consumable books in the nicest shape possible.
Enough of that little trip down memory lane.
Here's the meat of this entry: How do I teach spelling?
I was more than a little bit frazzled trying to get my first grader to spell correctly. I mean, he comes from at least two generations of good spellers. What was the problem?
Me. The teacher. (For obvious reasons at this age, I do not buy the teacher's edition for every subject. Mainly just math. I can teach all the other through reading, but math is it's own language.)
Yes, he could copy the words. Yes, he could complete the activities with ease. Still, how to get him to spell the words correctly when I call them out?
So, I thought back to Miss Hoover and my days as a second grader. What did she do?
And then after a great deal of thought, the solution became so clear:
Monday- Read the words aloud and spell them. Then copy them one time.
Tuesday- Write the words three times.
Wednesday- Do the fun activity pages and do a pretest. Any words that he gets correct on the pretest, I do not retest him on, but on Thursday.....
Thursday- Write the missed word(s) five times.
Friday- Retest only on the words he missed.
Very simple. Very straightforward. No reason to re-write and retest on material he's mastered. And our pre-tests and tests aren't always written on a lined sheet of paper. Sometimes, if there aren't repeat letters, he'll spell them out with his letter puzzle pieces. Other times, we take a big sheet of blue prints my mom gives us from her work, flip them over to the blank side and he'll write them in crayon or marker- something a little different than the standard #2 pencil.
The first week or two, he did a considerable amount of writing on Thursdays. By about the third week since we instituted this practice, he's written no more than five spelling words (out of his fifteen word list per week) five times on Thursdays. Usually, it's much less. Often we're 'done' with spelling for the week on Wednesdays.
Just thought I'd share what works for us.
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