English is not a simple language to learn how to decode and spell. Many of the consonants and vowels have a variety of sounds, depending on the surrounding letters. Hence, this year to aid students in learning how to spell and decode words we will focus on looking for patterns of letters and sounds, rather than individual letters. The brain is a ‘pattern detector’, and unknown words are separated by the brain into two patterns. These patterns are onsets (all the letters up to the vowel) and rimes (the vowel and letters following it). In order for children to be good decoders and spellers, they need to learn to quickly separate words into these parts, think of sounds associated with the patterns, and recombine them. Therefore, our spelling and phonics instruction will be one that teaches students to look for patterns from words they know and then use these patterns to read and spell unknown words.
Each week we will have a set of focus words that the students will review and practice through a variety of different activities. For example, we will chant words, perform word wall tasks, use words we know how to spell in order to spell new words (word families), guess the covered word, play phonics tic tac toe and bingo games, write our words in sentences, make word ladders, etc. Our spelling/phonics program will be focused on practicing our focus words throughout the week using different activities that will help our brain spell words with automaticity.
The students will not be given a spelling test on their focus words each week, as I have found in the past, that this only shows if students can spell the words when they are concentrating on them, not if they are using their word knowledge when they need it in reading and writing.
The students will work with and practice their focus words for the week, which will be integrated in our literacy activities. Instead of spelling tests, at times, I may send home different word work activities that you can have your child perform to help them practice their focus words so that they become automatic at spelling these.
I will also be looking at student’s writing and in addition to our general classroom focus words, if I see that there are some high frequency words in particular that each individual child needs to work on, then these will also be added to their list for the week, to review and practice.
We want to help each student become fluent with reading and spelling words. Our class contains a wide range of readers and writers, with many and varied decoding and spelling needs. You can find the list of high frequency focus words we will be studying this year below:
Complete Word List (click on attachment to view) -- Grade 3 Word Wall Words Yearly List
You can use this list to help guide you and your child on which words they need to review and practice so that reading and spelling each of these words becomes automatic for them. Again, the goal is to have “Perfect Practice,” where the students get enough practice spelling these words the right way to get any wrong spellings out of the brain’s automatic compartment and replace them with the right spellings.
If you have any questions and/or concerns about our spelling program, please do not hesitate to ask, I am here to help!
Websites for Making Words Spelling Practice:
http://www.spellingcity.com (You can download Spelling City as an app on an iPhone, iPod, or iPad as well!)
http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/interactives/construct/index.html
http://www.miniclip.com/games/flip-words/en/
http://www.miniclip.com/games/word-sailing/en/
http://www.bigiqkids.com/ShortVowelGameDemo.shtml (short and long vowel sounds)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/wordsandpictures/longvow/
http://www.eastoftheweb.com/games/
http://www.eduplace.com/kids/hmsv/smg/index.html
Great Websites for Sight Word Practice!
http://www.dolchword.net/dolch-word-games.html
