Hi, I'm looking for some help with spelling activities for my high spellers. Anyone have any ideas? I have found a couple online but some are just ideas no examples which would be helpful. I would really like to offer those students some alternate activities along the same spelling concpet the rest of the groups is studying but I'm having difficulty finding enough variety of activities that they're not doing the same ones week after week. Please post any ideas you would be willing to share. thanks
I do spelling groups, and each group has an independent activity when not meeting with me. IN CLASS- I have a set from Lakeshore that is prefix/root/suffix tiles which are pretty fun. I have them take the tiles (I seperate them out and choose which ones I want them to work with) and they make new words with them. It's pretty fun. Dictionary Skills are great to work on, and if you can find any way to play a dictionary game, it's fun. I made one up and it's a little like trival pursuit. The kids have to look up the words on the card and decide if what category it fits in (history, technology, arts, etc.) You could probably just use a trival pursuit board and make up cards with words from each category on it. I do a lot with affixes with my strong spellers, and they are doing Greek and Latin roots. A good activity is to give them a root, like "rupt" and come up with as many words as they can that have the root in it. Then, they form a hypothesis on what the root means. Once that is done, they learn the meaning and use it in some vocabulary study. This might be too hard, I don't know how strong of spellers your high kids are. The easiest thing for me to do, is work make cards with index cards. If you make a two cards with each word, they can play go fish, old maid (add in an old maid card) memory, etc. With the cards they can also do word sorts, sorting the words into categories based on their pattern. My middle group is doing silent letters, l, t, and d this week, and I am going to have them do a word sort based on these. Word sorts are great actitvities. Yesterday I made an UNO deck with rhyming words for my lowest kids. They had to either rhyme or change the beginning letter. The cards all had long e sounds. Sometimes the card games are more of a reading game with their spelling words. HOME WORK I use two scholastic books for my better spellers, No More Boring Spelling Practice Please, and Spell Well. They are both 4-6 books. I give my highest group a list of prefixes and suffixes and they have to make words with them. Define the words, look them up, write a story with the words, sometimes I give them a word history activity. Like my silent letter group is doing the word Wednesday.. it comes from an Anglo-Saxon God and I am going to direct them to a website as well as give them a photocopy from a book and have them write a mini-report on where our days of the week came from. (About a paragraph or so.) I hope this is helpful. I just wrote up a post on the elementary board about alternatives to spelling, and I know I don't do the typical. I also make up my own words, and they don't memorize the spelling of the pattern words. They memorize the high frequency words instead, which has a whole other set of memorization techniques. This is what I do for that. (HW with an adult. We also do them in class with a partner.) *Fair or Unfair? Students will complete a worksheet that helps them determine if their word is “fair or unfair” and they “highlight the tricky part.” This helps them visualize and remain aware of the parts of the word that do not follow traditional phonics patterns. *Write in the Air: This activity requires no prep, no set up, no special materials! Simply write the words in the air using your WHOLE arm. *Burn it: For this activity, we also may call it, “Burn it into your brain.” 1- Look at the word and spell it out in your mind. 2- Touch each letter in the word and spell it. 3- Close your eyes and spell it in your mind. Try to picture each letter. 4- Look at the word once more. 5- Close your eyes and spell it out loud. *Hangman: For this activity, use a piece of paper or a whiteboard slate. 1- Have a classroom partner or an adult at home write a dash for each letter, like in the game hangman. 2- Have the partner read the word out loud. 3- Write the letters for that word in the spaces, correctly spelling it. *Visual Imagery Quizzing: For this activity, you may also use a piece of paper or a white board slate. 1- Draw a space for each letter, like in the hangman game mentioned above. 2- Do not write any letters on the paper or board. Instead, the partner points to each space on the board and the speller says the letter. 3- Point to each space in order. 4- Point to each space in random order, over and over again (each letter 3-5 times) 5- Point to each letter in reverse order. 6- Point to each letter in the correct order.
Miss Froggy, THANK YOU SOOOOO MUCH FOR ALL OF YOUR VERY HELPFUL IDEAS!!!! I love learning new things from other teacher who are currently using the techniques. That way they know if it is working for them and any bumps in the road they have encountered. I can't wait to try out these new ideas! -lablover02
Those were some awesome ideas! I may "steal" a few myself. I have many different activites that I use with my spelling words. Most have to do with learning to use the word in your writing rather than learning how to spell them. 1. ABC MATH--Number the alphabet: A=1, B=2, C=3, etc. Then add up the value of each spelling word. 2. ACROSTIC POEMS--Create three acrostic poems for three of your spelling words. Check out www.readwritethink.org They have a special template to use online. 3. SPELLING WORD RIDDLES--The first line is the definition of the word (in their own words), the second line can be any other clue about the word. Example: It means Christmas in another language. It is a boy's name spelled backwards. NOEL 3. WORD SEARCH/WORD SCRAMBLE--Have a classmate solve. 4. SPELLING WORD COLLAGE: Students cut their spelling words out of magazines and arrange them on paper to make a picture. 5. STORY--Write a story using 10 of your spelling words. 6. DEFINTIONS--Pick 10 spelling words. Look in the dictionary to find their definitions. Then write the definition in your own words. Illustrate each word. 7. POSTCARD-- Log on to: www.readwritethink.org/materials/postcard Use this interactive site to create and print your own postcard. Use at least 10 spelling words in the body of your postcard. Print the postcard. Then draw a picture for the front of your postcard.
What about drawing cartoons using the words they are learning. You can set up boxes ahead of time for them to draw in. They should be encouraged to write the story plot on another paper first. Look up the words, for any words with multiple meanings write a new sentence with the additional meaning of that word. They could also even tag the definition that matches that sentence before they write that sentence. Something fun.... Write a sentence using their words and then write a code for it. Don't show the sentence (that's the answer key). Let someone else solve it.
I've used the Lakeshore prefix/root/suffix tiles, and they are great! You can have them do it on the darkened overhead, and then, while you are doing small group, have them switch it on, and check it without having to get up. The kids LOVE doing things on the overhead. I've always done Greek and Latin stems with my gifted students. It challenges them, and gives them a strong base for continuing word study in later grades. My favorite stems to teach are bio-, terra-, aqua- (and hydra-), -ology, -rium, and -ist.
Just how do the Lakeshore tiles work? I rummaged on the Internet and wasn't able to find a good explanation.
There are several different sets I like to use, but the prefix/root/suffix ones work like this: There is a pocket full of prefixes. They are on clear tiles, and are printed in one color of ink, so you can tell which ones are prefixes. There is a pocket full of root words. They are on clear tiles, and are printed in a different color ink. THere is a third pocket with suffixes. They are in a third color ink. The teacher picks out the prefixes and root words she wants to use, and the students make words with them on the flat surface of the overhead projector. When they are finished, they turn on the light, and it projects the words. The teacher quickly checks to make sure they are correct. Same for suffixes and root words. Does that make it clearer?
Sounds cool. About how many prefixes, how many suffixes, how many roots? Is there any indication on the tiles as to whether the language is Greek or Latin?
I don't remember how many tiles there are. I used to use them when I taught 5th grade, but that has been ages ago. They do not indicate Greek or Latin.
They are common prefixes and suffixes-- I WISH they had more complex sets. My strongest kids are working on the "bound" roots, spec, trans, tract, rupt, etc. It's a whole tub... probably 100 + tiles? The kit includes: under, over, de, re, in, un, mis, etc. ed, ly, ness, less, able, ful, ment, ing All of the roots are regular words, color, work, friend, etc. I found these online-- they look more complex (and cheaper!) http://www.reallygoodstuff.com/product_details.aspx?item_guid=06935e4b-c577-4747-9658-7ab6131b87be
Interesting stuff at reallygoodstuff... though the treatment of morphology leaves something to be desired. (There are roots that can't stand alone - those would be bound morphemes - but there are a great many more that can. Cat is a root...)
I am teaching the difference between bound and free roots. The Lakeshore roots can all stand alone. There is something to be said for having the roots in the reallygoodstuff set. Knowing the bound roots is also important. I am doing those with my "gifted" students. The rest of my class is working more with the more common prefixes, suffixes and roots. I noticed "ation" was a suffix, according to reallygoodstuff, but I was actually told that only "ion" is the suffix. The t + ion or s + ion are seperate, the others are ian, as in cian and tian... I would probably just cut it, unless they are plastic. Anyway, I think it can get really nit-picky, especially if you know a linguist!
Own Spelling LIsts This is not my idea but as a sub I have seen the idea in use in a few different classrooms. I am not exactly sure how it works but each week instead of having the class take the same spelling test with the same word the teachers let kids self select words. From what I have seen in the classrooms it seems that children have to choose word from lists of words that are posted around the room. I am not sure how these word lists are generated. I think that they must conform to a spelling, grammar or phonetic rule. It is really neat because each child has a separate list. Mldouglas
Sorry: I should have said that I had a look at the activity guide, which can be downloaded for free from the Web site, and which makes it fairly clear that the people involved are not very savvy when it comes to linguistics. Words are really quite astonishing things...
I'm learning a lot about this stuff. I've taken a number of classes this last year on the topic and am just still learning it myself. It's very complicated, and after two classes on just teaching the Greek and Latin aspect of English, I am still just touching the surface. I imagine to really teach it correctly, there would have to be a lot of teacher training. I am stumbling through it now, myself. I read the teacher guide as well, and though it was simplistic, but didn't notice anything terribly off (except what I mentioned in the previous post.) Was there something else? Should I not order these? I was thinking of it, since the Lakeshore kit is mostly free roots and we have already learned all of the prefixes and suffixes.
I can't vouch for the tiles themselves, having not seen them, but I'm going to guess that they're all right - just don't quote the explanations in the activity guide. Etymologically, the suffix is indeed -ion (indicate, indication). There are, however, a number of verbs that don't end in -ate which nevertheless end in -ation (administer, administration; declare, declaration; in some cases we've begun to reanalyze the verb (so alongside orient we see the innovative form orientate from orientation, and I think I've heard administrate at least once). One possibility, if there aren't distinct tiles for -ion and -ation, might be to add parentheses to the -ation tile so it reads "-(at)ion". -logy is better as -ology, and it's Greek, not Latin (it comes from the Greek word for 'word', logos - which is cognate with the Latin, to be sure). I'm a bit surprised not to see ante 'before' (Latin), since anti and ante get confused so readily. ped 'foot' is Latin, but pod 'foot' is Greek. (An old name for the Southern Hemisphere is the Antipodes - because the inhabitants' feet were pointed the opposite direction from the feet of those in the Northern Hemisphere.)
