Daily 5 Word Work

Happy Election Day! I'm still on maternity leave...the baby is about 6 weeks old and getting cuter every minute! I go back to school November 26th...I'm having mixed feelings about it. On one hand, I cannot wait to get back into the real world where I can have adult conversations with people other than my husband. I'm excited about teaching again, seeing where my kids are and getting fun stuff planned for them. However, I know I'm going to totally miss my baby boy!! :( Luckily, my mom and mother-in-law will be watching him. I'm glad that I don't have to take him to a daycare yet. Gotta remember to count my blessings, right?

So as I'm counting down the days back to work I realized I needed to finish the last four weeks of our spelling and word work plans. I use our district scope and sequence as a guideline, but my district doesn't have a real spelling program. Last year I discovered the book Words Their Way and loved it. So incorporated it into my daily five routine.

For our spelling practice each week we work on a certain pattern. These last few weeks my kids have been working on long vowel patterns. On Mondays I teach the "rule" (really more like a guideline since our language has so many exceptions) and the students take a pretest. If they test out of the regular list of words, then they get a challenge list. Whichever list they get, they put their spelling list in their BEACH binders (take home folder) and they begin cutting apart their words for a word sort.

Here is what their daily 5 word work expectations are for the week:

Monday: Take pretest, take list home for practice and do a closed sort (a sort with headers I give them). For example, if we are studying long a vowel patterns they will have a list of 20 words and headers that say "a_e", "ai", "ay" and "oddballs". Oddballs are words that look like they should follow the pattern but they don't, usually these are high frequency words.

Tuesday: Students must complete their closed sort and record it in their word work notebooks. If they finished this, then they may do an open sort (they choose how to sort the words), a blind sort (a partner reads the words, they spell it and put it in a category) or a speed sort (they time themselves to see how quickly and accurately they can sort their words).

Wednesday: They can choose to do one of the sorts listed above or use materials at the word work station to practice their words. I put out wiki stix, letter tiles, magnets, dry erase boards and strips and fun pens and markers.

Thursday: They repeat activities listed or do a buddy check. They can quiz their friends on their spelling words and highlight parts of the words they missed. You can download the buddy check paper below:

 



Fridays: We take a spelling assessment, I like to call it a Spell-A-Bration! Because we have two different lists, I have been pairing kids up and letting them quiz each other. It worked well for my class. With my struggling kids though, I have to give them a separate assessment. I have them use a word bank and take it with my special ed co-teacher in a separate room so that she can read it aloud and it's a small group environment.

So that's daily five word work in my classroom. I created sets of word sorts for the first three units of study in my room. They are in D'Nnealian font or a font called "cinnamon cake" which is more of a Zaner Bloser style font. You can check them out below:

Unit 1 word sorts: short vowels, beginning and ending consonant blends, consonant digraphs and complex consonants (hard g/soft g, hard c/soft c).

 

Cinnamon Cake Font version download here.

 

Unit 2 word sorts: long vowel patterns.

 

Cinnamon Cake Font version download here.

 

 

Unit 3 word sorts: special vowels like r-controlled vowels, vowel digraphs and vowel diphthongs.

 

Cinnamon Cake Font version available upon request! Send me an email at teachinlittletexans@gmail.com.

 

 

Have a great Tuesday!