matthews_09_journal_5

Emily Matthews EDC 452- Section 3 Assessment Journal #5 At the beginning of each week the students go over new spelling words for that week. The list has eleven words total. Six of the words go along with the Basil story that they are reading that week. These six words also have a common spelling. This week it was “long u”. The other five words are focus words that come from the McGraw-Hill frequency word vocabulary list. These words will also go on the word wall at the end of the week. The students are given a spelling test every Friday to see how well they know the spelling words. The teacher then grades these tests to see how well each student knows the spelling words. If the test is extremely bad with many wrong answers she will have the student retake the test after more study of the words. If the student struggled with the words then the teacher will provide extra assistance during the week to help them learn these words. Also, she may help them with that week’s spelling words in hopes of improving their score on the next test. The teacher said that the students usually do pretty well on these tests because the students are exposed to these words everyday and have a lot of practice using them. It is important that the students know these vocabulary words because many of them are high frequency words that they need to learn at a young age. I think this is a good assessment for their spelling. I think what makes it successful is the fact that the students are exposed to and practice these words daily. If these students were expected to study and learn these words on their own then they would have much more difficulty. I also think it is successful because the teacher will take time to give the student more help if they are struggling on the tests. If they don’t receive extra help they may continue to do poorly on other spelling test and on writing assignments where they use these high frequency words. Back to Assessment Journals