Shusterman_journal+2

Every Monday, right before lunch, the students take a spelling pretest. The students sit at their desks, and use dry-erase boards to spell out the words. Typically, the spelling test consists of their seven words for the week, which all are related. In addition, the tests normally contain a few other words that follow a chunk pattern and master-demon words, which are simple words that the students should all know how to spell. However, because they got back late from music, that students only had time to do their seven spelling words.

As mentioned earlier, the students write their words out on their own personal white boards. The teacher reads one word, sometimes using the word in the sentence, and the students write the word down. After the students are finished writing the word, they say, spell, and say the word together. The teacher then spells the word again so that the students can copy it down correctly if they missed it. They follow this process for all seven of the spelling words. After they are finished with the seven words, the students copy them from their white boards into a spot in their planner designated for their weekly words.

I like the idea of spelling pretests because they are a good way to asses spelling and to see how much a child already knows. This way the teacher can easily figure out what needs to be worked on more and what just needs to be reviewed. However, I am not sure if there really is a difference in results between using a white board and using pen and paper. Also, I do not think the 'say it, spell it say it' method is a good way to truly asses what the students know. While I think it is a great way to get the students to practice the words, there is no way of telling whether an individual student actually knows how to spell the words. In addition, all the students have the same seven spelling words, which makes assessment uniform, but I don't think it is beneficial for all students. Some students might have trouble with the words whereas other might not find the words challenging enough. It might be better to have a longer list of testable words that the students can choose from. That way they are still picking words that address the same theme, but those words are individualized for the student.

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