Curriculum Plan

Kelly Kingsley Spelling Curriculum Plan and Assessments August 11, 2009

I will be assessing my students for baseline data using the Words Their Way Qualitative Spelling Inventories (primary, elementary, and upper). “Spelling inventories not only offer information about students‟ spelling stages and their knowledge of orthographic features, but also offer information about their reading. Studies show that scores on these inventories are consistently related and predict reading achievement at all age levels from kindergartners through adult learners” (Bear, 2008). The traditional portion of my curriculum plan will be lessons from the Harcourt Trophies Spelling Practice Book. Lesson 1 will cover words with short a and short e. Students will work with word meanings, opposites, proofreading and riddles. Lesson 2 will cover the short vowels i, o and u. Lessons will involve synonyms, picking the correct spellings, proofreading, and rhyming. Lesson 3 will work with long vowels a and e. The students will be required to find opposites, sentence completion, picking the correct spellings, proofreading, and filling in the correct vowel spellings. Lesson 4 will cover words with long vowels i and o. Students will work with word meanings, sentence completion, rhyming, poetry, and proofreading. Lessons will continue after the four week session of integrated instruction. Lesson 10 covers words with /ou/. Lessons will involve sentence completion, proofreading, word puzzles, and finding smaller words in the list words. Lesson 11 will work with possessives and plurals. Students will work with sentence completion, alphabetical order, adding s,„s, or „ to words, picture clues, and phrase completion. Lesson 12 will cover words with /o/. Students will complete a story, work with word clues, proofreading, and sentence completion. Lesson 13 will work with long and short

/oo/ sounds. Lessons will cover matching pictures to words, rhyming, choosing the correct spelling, and categorizing list words. Lessons will be instructed as whole class lessons and seatwork will be assigned at the end of each lesson. The students will take a pretest every Monday and then take the dictation post test on Friday. The integrated portions of my curriculum will begin with using the Words Their Way Qualitative Spelling Inventories. I will use the information from the inventories to create spelling guided learning groups. “Word study instruction must match the need of the child” (Bear, 2008). I will meet daily with each group focusing on orthographic areas they need to learn/improve upon. The students will work on their spelling skills in reading and writing activities. “Students discover the basic principles of spelling-alphabetic, pattern, and meaningwhen they read and write purposefully and are also provided with explicit, systematic word study instruction by knowledgeable teachers” (Bear, 2008). I will focus on the six spelling principles to guide my instruction.

1. Spelling is learned as we use it. I will provide multiple opportunities to have students

write for a range of purposes and audiences. 2. Learning to spell is part of the developmental process of learning to write. 3. Errors can be viewed as diagnostic and developmental. Students will be encouraged to

attempt to spell words: I will let them approximate, especially when they are trying to use new words, point out parts they have spelled correctly. I will also use the parts they have misspelled as a focus for teaching opportunities.

4. Exploring words and vocabulary are part of learning to spell. Students will be learning in

a print rich environment (word wall). 5. Independence and self-evaluation are essential in spelling development. Students will

proofread their writing to identify possible spelling errors. 6. Effective spellers use a number of different strategies interactively in order to spell

correctly. “The best way to develop fast and accurate perception of word features is to engage in meaningful reading and writing, and to have multiple opportunities to examine those same words out of context” (Bear, 2008). Some of the activities students will engage in either with the small group or independently are: 

Same Letters/Different Sounds

Students identify words that are pronounced differently, but have the same letter pattern. For example, words with “ei” spelling pattern. 

Homophones Make a class chart of common homophones with illustrations to explain their meanings.

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Concept of Print Direct students’ attention to root words, prefixes, or suffixes by creating word maps for known words. Students can keep individual alphabetical lists of words they have misspelled. Students may start categorizing their spelling errors by patterns or rules in their spelling notebooks.

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Shared Writing Daily Edit: Put a selection on the blackboard or overhead. Point out errors to teach: suffixes, prefixes, root words, inflections, acronyms, contractions, homophones, compound words, etc. Spelling Conferences: Schedule spelling conferences with each student. Review writing folders and spelling notebooks, noting patterns of misspellings. Select one type of misspelling to address with the student and decide upon a strategy to help the student gain control of the language. Keep conferences short, about five minutes. 

Word Wall Activities Write Tap Spell-students number a sheet of paper with numbers one to five, the teacher calls out five words putting each in a sentence, as the teacher calls out each word a student finds and points to the word on the Word Wall, students clap and chant the spelling of each word, then students write the word. Read My Mind-Teacher give students clues (five in all), by the fifth clue each student should know which word the teacher is describing. Students write which word they think the teacher has in mind after each clue. Points are awarded for when the word was guessed.

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Sorts Sort words according to syllables, letters, prefixes, or suffixes Group words according to sound Word families

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Prefix of the Week

Select a prefix each week. Have students look up the prefix in different dictionaries and compare the etymology (word history). Brainstorm and list as many words as can be thought of that begin with the prefix. Have them try to explain what the prefix means in each word. These words, written on posters, may become part of the Word Wall. 

Word Webs Words that are related by meaning will often have similar spelling patterns. Students can build webs of words to illustrate the relationships. As I did in the traditional curriculum study, I will also pretest and posttest during the

integrated portion. Students will not have the same spelling list, but each student will be working with words that are individualized to their spelling needs. At the end of the semester, I will once again give the Words Their Way Spelling Inventory to gather data to compare to the baseline data given at the beginning of the year. I will also compare the weekly spelling test scores of the traditional instruction periods to the integrated instruction periods. Using the information gathered, I will then decide whether to continue with the integrated instruction for the second semester.

Bibliography

About English-Spelling. (n.d.). Retrieved April 8, 2009, from About English: http://wwwfp.education.tas.gov.au/English/implementing.htm Bear, D. R., Invernizzi, M., Templeton, S., & Johnston, F. (2008). Words Their Way; Word Study for Phonics, Vocabulary, and Spelling Instruction. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc. Farr, R., Beck, I., Strickland, D., Mckeown, M., Roser, N., & Yopp, H. (2004). Trophies Third Grade Spelling Practice Book. Orlando, Florida: Harcourt, Inc. How Do You Spell? (n.d.). Texas Education Agency. Lutz, E. (1986). Spelling Instructional Guidelines. Retrieved April 8, 2009, from Reading Rockets: http://www.readingrockets.org/article/3476?theme=print