Words, Words, & More Words

Phonics, Spelling, and Writing

In First Grade, students are just beginning to learn how to write and spell. For many of our writing assignments in class, we encourage students to 'tap' words out and write down the sounds that they hear. Because of the English language, this approach does not always produce correct spelling; however, this 'phonetic spelling' is an important step in their growth as a writer. Does this mean that we never tell them how to spell a word? No. We will use our best judgment at the moment to decide how best to help them and how much to encourage them to just write down the sounds they hear. As we learn more and more spelling patterns during the year, the spelling of their independent writing will improve. In addition, as the year progresses we will hold them more accountable for correctly spelling 'sight words' and words with spelling patterns that we have worked on.

Most weeks we focus on a specific spelling pattern and two or three 'sight' or 'trick' words; other weeks we review spelling patterns already introduced. They will be assigned on Monday, and we will have a Weekly Spelling Quiz.

There are two types of spelling words assigned each week.

Most of the words are related to whatever spelling patterns we are working on in the phonics portion of reading curriculum. For example, at the beginning of the year we work on simple three letter words that have a short vowel in the middle (cat, man, red . . . ). These are called Consonant-Vowel-Consonant words (CVC). As the year goes on, we move on to other more complex spelling patterns. We will assign the spelling pattern with sample words. If students understand the concept of the spelling pattern, they should be able to spell any word that uses the same pattern.

There will also be 'sight' or 'trick' words that students need to memorize. These are words that occur frequently in their reading or writing, and they either do not have a particular spelling pattern, or they have spelling patterns that we have not yet worked on. Example words are: said, you, what, etc.) We will assign specific words for the week.