Embedded Files
Pre-Test
Near the beginning of school, I give everyone a spelling test. I have students number their paper 1-20. I tell them these are kindergarten through fourth grade words. After we finish those, I have them re-number their paper 1- 22. I tell them these are fourth through ninth grade words. Click here for those list of words. I pull it from the Words Their Way book. I'll re-give this test right before parent conferences, so I can measure their growth. It goes right in their portfolios. If you have the book, go to page 299 for "McGuffey Qualative Inventory of Word Knowledge" which can help pinpoint exactly what level each of yours is. However this, "spelling test" is better given in small groups.
Spelling Lists
This unit is four weeks of activities with a spelling list. The spelling lists has Short A, Short E, Short I and Short O. However, keep in mind that this is designed for 4th and 5th graders with some gifted kids and Spanish speakers mixed in my class. There are words like "hot" and words like "chalk," which have the same "ahhhh" sound. The list is short, about ten words, so we can spend time on of the days of the week talking about the patterns and the ridiculousness of English, like the "alk" pattern, and the rule-breakers.
I typically do this list if I have a class of kids who don't have a solid foundation on the sounds of English.
This mini-unit covers -ight, -aught, and every rule breaker. Gh is just weird. No nice way to say it.
This unit is for all the of sounds CH makes, such as chair, chemistry and Chicago. Ch seems easy but it gets pretty tricky!
If your students need more basic CH words, click here for a mini-packet from Ms. Carl
CH Slides This slide show starts off with some lower-level CH words, like Christmas, and goes to some higher ones, like anarchy. Students will practice reading CH words of all levels.
I got tons of kids who spell "nachur," not "nature." This is why I made this unit!
Cursive Practice for /f/ sounds (like f, ph and gh)
Learning the Rules
(We use this for homework, sub plans, centers...)
Extra Practice for....
y changes to i
Cursive Practice for words with Y to I
"dge" Words
Making Words
If you never did making words before, and you are working with fourth grade and up, start in the beginners column. Basically, you give kids specific letters and have students sort those letters into actual words.
The basic lesson prep is easy: Make one copy for each student, and hand out the copy, a pair of scissors, and a pencil. Students try to unscramble the letters to make as many words as possible. The goal is to figure out the secret word. The secret word is the one word that can be spelled using every single letter at least one time. For the first one, the secret word is "misinterpret." But students are going to find words like "pest" and "snip" and "empire." Here is my general format for this beginning level:
Give students five minutes to cut out the letters and start working on their own.
Give students the next five minutes to come up with ten words that they don't think any one else in the room has.
Using the second page of the document as a cheat sheet, I guide students to spell the words no one else has discovered yet, such as "premise."
I give students an additional five minutes to try to arrange all the letters to make one word: the secret word. If they succeed, their team earns five points... or whatever little prize I am doing that year. If they fail, I simply slowly sound out the word, syllable by syllable, and make each student spell it with their letters as I sound it out.
If you and your class are already familiar with how this activity works, just skip to the column to find the chunk your students need specifically.
Primary Students
Short E+ Short I + Short U
Short I + Short E 1
Short I + Short E 2
Silent E
Also, if you have kids that are waaaaaay behind in spelling, use this packet to so some remedial spelling, but it is disguised as learning cursive!
Alphabetizing Words
The purpose of alphabetizing words is for students to practice reading new words, get familiar with some Tier 3 words, work together with peers, practice some multisyllabic words....
Baseball Teams (This is great way for kids to practice map skills and locate the cities on the USA map!)
Mentor Sentences
Do you know about mentor sentences? This is that, but a little modified. A mentor sentence is when you lift a sentence straight from their history book or their science book, and then you do this big analysis of the sentence. Here is what I do:
Monday: Write the sentence on the board and have kids identify the parts of speech. We use these magnets and kids put the “proper noun” magnet above the proper noun. Hand each kid magnet and give them team points when they get it right.
Tuesday: Students are now in partners and one kid has a copy of the sentence and the other has the dictation paper. First, one kid reads it while the other kid tries to write it, with help from the first. They coach each other to make sure all the commas, periods and spellings are correct. Then, they switch roles! It's kind of like the Kagan strategies "Rally Coach."
Wednesday: Analyze the sentence. Write the sentence on some chart paper and run it kinda of like a Number Talk: sit the kids on the carpet with nothing in their hands, have them make comments on what they notice, and then ask them some questions, such as Why is this capitalized? What does this punctuation symbol mean? All the while, read, re-read and re-read the sentence. You can do some color tricks, like put all the nouns in red and then ask kids, why are these words in red? What do they all have in common? Tons of stuff you can do from here.
Extra time: We do the word search.
Thursday: We do the world scramble.
Friday: We have a test on the sentence. I read it and the kids write it, just like Tuesday’s activity.
5th Grade
Science
Mentor Sentence: Refraction and Reflection
Mentor Sentence: Tectonic Plates
Mentor Sentence: State and Federal Governments
History
Other
Grammar with American History There are some incorrect sentences that need editing. All of these sentences are facts about the American Revolution so you can teach grammar, teach editing, and reinforce those facts.
Grammar with California History All of these sentences are facts about California history, specifically the Spanish era. Grammar with California History: Part Two is more of the same, but it's leaning towards Gold Rush facts instead of Spanish era.
Run on Sentences Seriously, I just read my class' narrative writing and there are so many run-on sentences that I am going to scream! So I made this quick editing activity to show them how to end those endless run on sentences!
Parts of Speech
Download these Magnetized Parts of Speech for fun with the mentor sentence. You just write the mentor sentence on the board, hand each kid a magnetized word, like a noun or adjective, and they have to label the parts in the mentor sentence. I made it on the Google slides so it's easy for you to make your own copy and edit.
Figurative Language
Idiom Worksheets
Symbolism Worksheets
Vocabulary Development:
Shades of Meaning
Options: You can have students write the words on the paper to practice spelling. Another option is to have the words pre-printed and cut out so they're just sorting them. Kind of depends on your class.
This chart is great for vocabulary development. We call it "Shades of Meaning." Here is the basic tasks:
(1) Every team or individual has a copy of the arrow and the teacher has a list of words.
(2) Give students the first word to place on the arrow, or spectrum of meaning. For example, if the word is ferocious, that word would lean towards "Bad."
(3) Let kids come up with five or six of their own words to put on the arrow, such as kind, violent, mean.
(4) Now, give the class the rest of the list of words. They should discuss with each other where to put it.
(5) Allow students to share out or have a gallery walk. The whole objective here is exploring the words.
Vocabulary Development:
Word of the Week
Word Sorts:
Spelling Patterns Sorting
Greek and Latin Root Patterns
Greek and Latin Roots
The two packets below a cover, almost to entire years of Greek and Latin roots. Every packet comes with the same kind of activities and structure. Day one, you preview the words; day to you work on analogies; then there's a sorting at the end… We used to put these in the homework packets, but sometimes we use them after assemblies… Very independent work.
Sorting Packets and Miscellaneous
Greek and Latin Roots Bulletin Board
This link has the pieces of the bulletin board that I assemble for my whiteboard. All of the pieces here in this file are laminated and put on card stock with a magnet on the back of them. It kind of gets the conversation going. It's what I use to introduce the unit. The sorts listed below are things that students do in the weeks after I have this bulletin board up. I usually do one of those listed below once a week.
Greek and Latin Roots Slideshows
Audio and tract Partner Spelling test
Geo and Graph Partner Spelling Test
Partner Sentences mal
Greek and Latin Root Sorts
I put all the poetry stuff on a separate page so just click here for it. You can also navigate to it from the menu at the top of every page.
Other Resources
Spelling Lists organized by syllables and sound
Puzzlemaker This is a great website I used to make customized word searches, crosswords, things like that to help students practice their spelling it vocabulary words.
What's a preposition? This is a YouTube video that will get stuck in their heads after they hear it! But then it will ask you what a proposition is I call that a win-win
History of Languages...
This section is just fun... Why is the alphabet in that order? Where did the alphabet come from? Why are words that rhyme spelled so differently, like through and grew? This section answers that!
Chinese characters are the oldest characters in the world that are still used. The first writing is now called Cuneiform. (The people at the time didn't call it that.) The funny thing is that the first recorded language was not language, but math: who owed who money, how much the trade rate was for different thing. In fact, the oldest recorded name was the accountants name! Slowly, over time, sound spelling replaced characters in some areas, like the USA.
peep tot.pdfDid you know a universal language was created a couple generations ago? There was a problem between the World Wars - the Allies could not understand each other. There was an attempt to make a universal language... here are the pieces of that. Can you read it?
This is a great Ted talk that explains why American English has such horrible spelling and WHY we can't change it!
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