Hello and welcome to Adventures in Literacy Land!
I'm Pixie Anne from Growing Little Learners and I have a round up of some of my favourite activities for independent spelling work today. These are all fun, practical ideas I've collected from my many hours of professional development on pinterest that I have used and found my little learners to enjoy. So thank you to all those who originally shared - you can link to the original sites by clicking on any of the images.
Many of you may be on your summer break already. Unfortunately, after this one week off, we still have close to 8 weeks left until we break up...8 WEEKS! If you are on your break already, these may be some ideas you can use with your own little ones at home, or you can store them up and pin them yourself for when when you're back to school.
Here we go...
These 2 activities I love because they build those all important fine motor skills too. Whilst the picture above (right) shows numbers in that tub of water, I obviously used it with plastic letters. I had small groups of 2-3 children work together with our key words on flashcards. One child chose the card and read the word aloud, and the other had to build it. They then checked together and rewarded each other with counters if they got it right. Most counters wins!
I love using scrabble tiles! They are so cheap to buy in bulk on ebay and have so many uses (I like to use them to craft a lot too). I'm also a big fan of resources I don't have to go to too much effort to make. I have made my own sets of lolly sticks and cups for example with letters on in the past but have to say that pre-made resources like magnetic letters and scrabble tiles will always win with me! I'm also guilty of always buying a pack of the plastic eggs when I see them because they are just so versatile in the classroom and when I saw this idea (combined with the scrabble tiles), I had to try it! The kids love it and it keeps them busy for ages unscrambling and building those key words!
These ideas are a favourite because they also help us work on our letter formation and handwriting. Building words and rearranging letters is fun and definitely worthwhile, but actually writing the words out builds that all important muscle memory. The sensory aspect of writing in salt, rice, sand, paint, shaving foam, play dough etc. always engages those in my class who are more reluctant to pick up a pencil and hate copying out their spellings. They love the reward of being able to draw or write whatever they like once they have completed the activity or scored a certain number of points for correct spellings too.
There is a great post by Lisa from Growing Firsties on sight word spelling practice and this tic-tac-toe grid has been popular with my class. We also made up our own grid with different ideas (building with the scrabble tiles, magnetic letters for example) and it's an activity we use often at school and copy to send home.
The final idea I wanted to share today was this one from Stephanie at 3rd Grade Thoughts. I made my own version (as I live in the UK and needed different coins!) and love how we get to work on our money total and addition skills while building words. Again, I like my class to work in pairs with one choosing a flashcard with one of our key spellings and reading it aloud to their partner. The partner spells out and builds the word. Together, they then work out the money total. Such great practice and collaboration!
So there you have it. Some of my favourite activities and, more importantly, the favourite activities of those in my class!
I'd love to hear about what works well for your little learners so do leave a comment below.
Thanks for stopping by today!
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