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Spelling Update - a Few Minor Changes

SPELLING ROUTINE AND SPELLING QUIZZES

Starting next week there will be a small change or two in the spelling program. Here are some details to help explain.
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● On the spelling quiz itself, starting next Friday there will be 2-5  bonus words – words that have the same exact spelling patterns we worked on but are not on any of the lists students studied. The words will be of similar difficulty to the words that are on the spelling list. After all, the
point is not only for students to only get 100% on a quiz, but also to carry over the skill to spell other words correctly. Using different words as well as monitoring their spelling in their writing will help you and I know how they are doing. Doing spelling the traditional way (ie giving students a list of 10 words, having them memorize the words for  the weekly quiz) sometimes results in"Friday Spellers" who may or may not be able to translate the spelling skills into their daily writing. Here are two teachers who use the same idea of quizzing students with different words then the words on the study list and have great blog posts:

My teacher buddy Sally's post called A True Test Of Spelling Skills 

And Beth Newingham's Post about word study at Scholastic 

● For example, a child might have a list with words like this: cat, bat, fit, bin, chin, hop, shop, top, flop, cob. On the quiz on Friday, words like rob and chat could be added.

● We take the quizzes on Spellingcity.com each week. That way a record of your child’s
performance is saved right there for later reference. You can even look it up when they are logged
on under records. The system only allows us to do the “Spelling Test” (red button) one time.
Therefore please do not have your child go online and do the spelling test at home. They may do
the “practice” test (gray button) at home. We use SpellingCity.com and the Spelling City app in our classroom. It can really help students learn their weekly spelling words while having fun at the same time! Feel free to have your child play any of the games on the site!

●  I will be discussing the additional words that will be on quizzes with the class. Feel free to mention it at home too.

Please let me know if you have any questions at any point.


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