Prevoke: Vocabulary, Prediction and Word Study Game

If you want a fun strategy that incorporates all of the above, this is the one for you.  Timothy Rasinski describes how to use it in his book Essential Strategies for Word Study (Rasinski, Zutell, 93).  I will introduce it to the class by planning lessons for our 6 differentiated reading groups.  Here's how it will look.

First, I have chosen 10 words from each story that all have at least one thing in common.  I'll tell you why towards the end.  The reading group leader will show the students the ten vocabulary words on a poster (in the order in which they appear in the story), in addition to the title of the story and the picture on the front of the book.  If there are any words students don't know the meaning of (or I think they will have problems with) this will be the time to discuss the meanings, as well. 

Then 2 groups of students will be given cards with the ten words on them.  They will sort them into any category they want as long as they have a good reason for sorting them that way.  The two groups will come back together and explain why they sorted the words in the way they did.  (Hopefully, they have started to put them together to form the beginning of the story.) 

We will then discuss how we can use these words to help them make their predictions for what the story is about.  If necessary, you can also tell them that this time the words on the poster are posted in the order in which they will see them in the book.   Students will discuss or record their predictions in the reading response section of the reading notebook for what the story will be about based on these clues.  We will remind them that we have tried to help them sequence the order of events by putting the words in the order in which they appear in the story (review what sequence events is--the order in which things happen).  Stop halfway through the story, and tell them they may update or amend their predictions if they need to.

After the story, have students compare and contrast their own predictions to the actual story.  Have them record if they were right or wrong about certain things and what they were.

If time, look at the ten words together.  Ask if anyone can identify what all ten words have in common (they are all verbs, and they all end in "ed").  Review what a verb is and ask if they know what the addition of the "ed" does to the verb (it means the action already happened in the past).  Tell them authors often write stories using past tense verbs. 

Then take a look at one particular word (even if one of the stories doesn't have this verb, have them discuss it anyway), and tell them the rule for adding "ed" to that word (for example, cried--when there is a "y" at the end of a verb, and you want to turn it into past tense, you replace the "y" with "ied").  Ask them for other examples of verbs that end in "y" (fry, try, pry, study, reply or whinny), and have them spell the words in past tense, using this new rule.

Recent Classroom Observations

Recently, I have noticed that my students have been looking at their own writing and circling mistakes on their own before they come back to ask me if they can use the Franklin Speller.  I am excited the majority of the class is doing this on a regular basis.  There are still a few students who ask me how to spell a word, and again I ask them how they think it's spelled.  99% of the time they are correct. 

Up until now, I have been discouraging students from telling their classmates how to spell words because I want each learner to grow to be independent in this area.  However, due to the social nature of human beings, I'm beginning to think that I should teach all of my students a couple tips to help those who ask them how to spell a word.  For example, they could simply ask, "How do you think you spell it?"  If that doesn't work, I could tell students about a strategy I use.  If a student has to go to the next step to get help, I think of a word that rhymes with the sound they are struggling with.  For example, if the word is "boat", I ask them if they know how to spell "coat" or "goat".  If they do, I ask them to spell one of the words.  Then I tell them the last three letters are spelled the same.  It seems like teaching my students strategies for teaching others would be a more effective solution than telling students not to talk about how to spell words at all.  It would also help the students who take on the teaching role by giving them confidence and encouraging them to develop their own thinking skills by coming up with new strategies for teaching spelling to someone else.  Who knows?  They may think of ideas that have never even crossed my mind, but help the student speller learn how to spell the word.

Homophones: How do you write them so you're using the right word in your writing?

Do you have a fun and effective that you use to teach homophones in your classroom?  The theme for our last spelling test was homophones.  This was certainly the test where students scored the lowest.  Next week, we will do an activity on homophones so that students can create visual/linguistic clues to remember what each word means.  Each team of four will be given 8 examples of commonly misspelled homophones (for example:  their and there).  For each word, students will need to draw a picture or write a word that gives us clues about the definition of each word.  For example, if a team gets their and there, they might draw a picture of 3 people for "their" and a picture of a place for "there".  For two and too, they might write two tally marks for "two" and write the word "also" next to "too." 

The Homophone Game will be used at the beginning of the lesson to introduce examples of how you can use illustrations to give clues about what each word means.

Teams will also be given words that they have to alphabetize.  One team may get words for the letters "a, b and c".  Then they will have to alphabetize them before writing their clues.  In this way, we can post these around the room alphabetically so that students can easily find the correct word they want to use in their writing.  Each team will then present their list of words and the clues to the class before the posters are hung around the room. 

(This activity was adapted from Rebecca Sipe in her book They Still Can't Spell?, but it was also amended to meet the needs of my students.)
A Complete List of Homophones

Another List of Homophones

Homophones and Homonyms

Homophone and Homonym Games

More Homophone Games

Video on Homophones

Teaching Spelling in Context

Constance Weaver, Rebecca Sipe and Kylene Beers all agree on one thing.  It is best to teach students spelling in context.  Over the years, I have heard many people suggest using student writing as exaamples for teaching spelling.  However, I would never want to embarrass one of my students in front of the class by doing this. 

So what are some other strategies for teaching students spelling in context?  After taking the specialized literacy class at a week long Responsive Classroom workshop a couple years ago, I learned that using the Morning Message is a great way to engage students in dialogue by looking for spelling errors I may have made in the message.  I also know that other experts say that teachers should always model proper spelling and grammar so students know what this looks like. 

As I was pondering this question, I found some spelling links on the Responsive Classroom website.  The one that would benefit students most is one called Interactive Spelling Bee.  Students can choose their grade level, and if they discover that their grade level is too easy or difficult, they can go to another grade level to meet their needs.  The computer reads the paragraph aloud to the student, and the student has to type in the missing words correctly.  If they get all of the words spelled correctly, then they move on to level 2.  The fact that this website allows differentiation by grade level and reads the paragraph aloud for students who aren't reading at grade level makes this a wonderful website to visit so students can practice their spelling skills.

Do you have other ideas?  Please share if you do.  I'm just beginning my exploration of this topic and would appreciate hearing how others have done this successfully in their classrooms.