SPEEDY SPELLING TICKET

I have been thinking the past few days of strategies which I could put into place during my NQT year to ensure I do not get overwhelmed with the constant ‘Miss how do you spell?” questions.

Although I have never let my dyslexia hold me back I handle it in the classroom by purposely thinking ahead and planning greatly in advance. I can execute a lesson to the standard which children deserve when I do this, however, the older I went in my school placement year groups the more I was faced with moments of panic wondering if I am spelling words correctly for the children which they have required for a piece of writing work. (These words you can not truly plan for as every child brings a unique version of the work to the classroom and for that requires a different set of tools and in this case spellings.

To combat these moments I had of panic during my teacher training, for my NQT year I have designed these handy “Speedy Spelling Tickets”. My plan for these is to have a bunch cut-out, in my desk ready to give out to a child if I do not have the time to check the spelling myself (if I am working with a target focus group).

These tickets promote child lead learning as they first have to sound the word out, they must write what they hear. They then use peer scaffolding to aid the spelling (ask a student at their table how they think the word might be spelt). They can then research the work using a classroom iPad, computer or dictionary and write the correct spelling down. They will then confirm what source they used to find the spelling.

I would hope by children carrying out this short task it will not only widen their own spelling bank and vocabulary but will further take pressures of spelling off me.

I will then, of course, take the ticket and check it for the child, I was thinking of putting the tickets into a scrapbook for the children to go to if they need to be reminded for the spellings. Voila! creating a classroom spelling manual!