In Amanda C.'s blog Entry # 7, she compares and contrasts her classroom experiences using various activities to teach her students spelling with the strategies that Tompkins et al. (2022) highlight in their discussion in Chapter 6 on "Learning to Spell." Amanda provides good details about how she is teaching her students spelling each week, and she discusses how she is seeing her students having success in these activities because she has noticed fewer spelling errors in their work since the school year began. I think that Amanda does a great job of demonstrating in her description of her class spelling activities that the "30 minutes of valuable instruction time spent each day in completing spelling activities" (Tompkins et al., 2022, p. 174) is not "excessive" but is being used in a way that is benefitting her particular students' needs.
Both Amanda's experiences teaching spelling and Tompkins et al.'s (2022) discussion of different strategies are examples of the importance of teachers knowing, understanding, and assessing the needs of their students in developing and growing them as good spellers. Amanda lists several spelling activities her students complete, including the following: "roll and write, rainbow words, stamp words, silly sentences, and tic tac toe words." She says the students "buy in" to her updating the spelling activities, which helps them want to be engaged in learning to spell, which can be difficult for some of them with their particular needs.
Tompkins et al. (2022) also focus on using the individualized approach to spelling instruction by letting students have a choice of the words they will study based on their writing projects, as well as choosing high-frequency words on a master list. The teachers first give a pretest of the selected words so students know what they need to work on during the week to prepare for a final spelling test at the end of the week. Tompkins et al. (2022) recommend different strategies for studying words. Still, I believe, as Amanda pointed out, that teachers must know what works best for their students, even if it is a strategy that isn't used as often as in the past (i.e., using words in sentences) or if it is a more popular strategy used in educational settings today, such as word study. Teachers must be flexible and knowledgeable of all the different ways to spark interest and the desire to learn to spell in each student. As an ENL teacher, I will really need to be aware of the native languages of each student, so I can work with them to understand differences in spelling words from their language versus the English language so that my students can be more alert to their tendencies to spell words based on their home languages. I think the assessment is critical, though, for all teachers when they teach spelling so that they focus on knowing what errors the students are making, why they are making the errors, and the best strategies that would engage them to learn how not to make those spelling errors. Our main goal as teachers is to see each of our students succeed and find their own "genius" and joy in the learning journey (Muhammad, 2021).
References
Muhammad, G. (2020). Cultivating genius: an equity framework for culturally
and historically responsive literacy. Scholastic.
Tompkins, G.E., Rodgers, E.M., & Rodgers, A. (2022). Literacy for the 21st century: balancing reading and writing instruction. Pearson.
Lida, I think your final statement in this entry is most powerful. If teachers allow for time to conduct assessments -- not just "on" students but "with" students, the students will also have a better understanding of why they are making errors or "miscues" they are making.
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